A Reminiscence, By Professor Berkeley Q Larch
by AwkwardVulpix
Summary: A new beginning for the brilliant Berkeley Q. Larch, told by the man himself! Although there are no ancient demons or insane computer viruses here, he'll still have quite a time getting to the Unova region to prove his translation device works. What could possibly go wrong, other than almost everything?
1. Prologue

Author's note: This has nothing to do with the earlier Berkeley Larch story. I'm moving on from that entirely. This is all new, there are a few characters from the old one, but other than that, nothing to do at all. Enjoy!

A Reminiscence, by Professor Berkeley Q. Larch

()()()

PROLOGUE

Hello, dear reader. Firstly, I thank you for looking at my story, and I sincerely hope it catches your interest. Secondly, I shall explain what exactly this story is.

Contained herein is an elaboration of the famous story of the journey of myself, and several close friends, from the Kanto region to Unova, and all of the events that occurred within. I write to show you the truth of my infamous journey, outside of all the rumor and exaggeration and embellishment that had previously been so common.

Now, then, let us begin the story. It all began on a fine June morning just outside of Lavender Town, inside my home and laboratory. I had been working on my greatest project, that of a specialized earpiece that would translate the complex speech of Pokemon to a comprehensible human dialect, when a knock came on my door. I set down my work and quickly answered it, finding none other than the esteemed Professor Oak, a colleague I had occasionally worked with.

"Oak?" I asked, adjusting my glasses. "What brings you here?"

"Ah, Larch, good to see you!" He greeted, stepping inside. "I came by because there's a conference in Unova coming up, and I was hoping you could come and explain some things."

"Unova? They only opened up recently, correct?"

"Yes, this will be some of their first exposure to the outside since the war, and you would make a very good example for them."

"Hm." I glanced back to my lab, and my life's work resting upon the table, thinking about Oak's offer.

After some thought, I asked, "When is the conference?"

"In two weeks, in Black City. Here's some information on it, along with boat tickets for you and two guests, if you want." He handed me an envelope, which I accepted readily.

"Two weeks? I can doubtlessly get several working prototypes in that time…"

"Prototypes?" He questioned.

"Oh, you know, that pet project of mine, the translator?"

"That thing?" Oak groaned. "That's an impossible fantasy, Larch, you know that!"

"They said the same of that fancy little encyclopedia device of yours, and look where it is now. Everyone in the world has one!"

Oak looked away. "I…how about that 'legendary' you caught?" He asked, his tone of voice communicating a sort of doubt.

I grimaced. "That Shaymin is entirely a legendary Pokemon and you know it."

"Oh! I…of course it is, I would never imply that…" He stammered out, trying to save face

"Watch your tongue, Oak." I turned away from him, considering my options. "In fact, I'll do both! I will present the translator and the Shaymin both, and they will love it!"

"I…well, thank you very much. I'll send you an e-mail with the rest of the information." Oak stepped out, but then turned back to me. "I hope you have a safe journey."

"Indeed."

Oak finally left, leaving me alone with my work. I turned back to my lab, but was soon interrupted by more knocks.

"Who could possibly…?" I muttered as I opened the door, revealing a very unwelcome sight: A lanky, pale fellow named John LeBeur, my greatest rival, and a seemingly perpetual annoyance. He wasted no time in stepping inside and rudely sitting himself upon my couch, before greeting me with a "Hello, Berkeley!", in that nasally voice of his.

"Ah, LeBeur. How…nice of you to stop by. What brings you here?"

"I saw Oak walking away from here and thought I'd see what's up. What's up?"

"Well…there is a conference in Unova in a few weeks, more specifically Black City, and Oak wanted me to do a presentation on…"

"That thing you're still pretending is a legendary?" LeBeur interrupted, lightly chuckling.

I only growled. "It is a legendary, and you know it, LeBeur. It took months of tracking and research to even find out where one might be, and catching one was a different matter entire—"

"Oh, it's legendary because you couldn't figure out where it was?" He sneered. "I wonder what that means for me, because I caught an actual legendary in only one month!"

He always used that Latias to his advantage, whether in a battle or out of one. His boasting of it consistently proved tiring.

"I should think that since mine took longer to capture, it would be a more impressive achievement."

"Oh, yeah, misplacing your notes is really impressive. Don't tell me you're gonna be showing that thing off at the conference?"

"Actually, yes, I have every intention of doing so, as well as my translation device, thank you very much."

"Oh, boy, two failures for the price of one!" He cheered, rising from the couch and leaving my house. "I might just have to go to this conference to see how badly you fail!" he clamored from outside, before running off in uproarious laughter, leaving me to fume.

"Ha! Laugh at me, will you? I'll show you! My life's work will be more impressive than you could have ever imagined! I shall be the envy of professors everywhere! You will be nothing more than dust in the wind, while I receive every award there is! Perhaps I shall even—" I wheeled around to find that my ranting had secured me nothing except a very uncomfortable look from Rembrandt, my Smeargle, who was sitting in the kitchen.

"Ah, Rembrandt. Uh, you will have to excuse me, I was just...talking to myself."

"Smear?" he asked.

"That LeBeur fellow." Upon my answer, Rembrandt grimaced. "I know, right?" I shook my head, going back to my lab. "Soon, I shall understand everything you say. Don't worry…"

()()()

By the next morning, after a long night of work, the first working prototypes, three of them, had been completed. Though my eyes were bloodshot and my head was swimming through black tar, I had no interest in resting, not when there was testing to do. I inserted the earpieces, one per ear, and then weakly called for Rembrandt. Rather than an answer in the typical speech, I heard an answer in proper English, to be more specific, the word "What?"

Even more giddy than before, I asked him to come in, and he soon did, rubbing his eyes.

"How early is it?" He muttered, barely picked up by the device.

"Six-thirty." I answered.

"Jesus, can't you wake me up at a reasonable…wait a second, how did you understand my question?"

I pointed to my ears. "I finished them." I grinned widely. "They work perfectly!"

Rembrandt stared in interest. "Huh. I guess it really is possible."

A frown appeared on my face. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Rembrandt stammered and started spouting out explanations, but I stopped him. "Whether or not it's possible has become irrelevant, because I have proven that it is in fact possible." Suddenly, an idea came into my head of how to test it more thoroughly. "Rembrandt, shall we go into town to see how well it works?"

"Yeah, I really think you need to get out. Let's do it."

"Very well," I said, not quite registering the insult. "Could you get Jon?" Jon was my Furret, and is a fine compatriot, though a rather poor fighter.

Anyway, Rembrandt nodded and ran off, leaving me with my inventions.

"Perhaps I could take some guests with me, to really test them out." I thought aloud, holding one of the earpieces up. "Perhaps there will be some trainers in town that would be interested." My eyes began to droop, but I stopped myself before I fell asleep. "Coffee. Coffee is also a good idea."

"Hi!" Jon chirped, suddenly clambering onto my head. "Whatcha doing?"

"Oh, there you are. Just wondering about my translators, is all."

"Ooh, you finished them?"

"Indeed I have."

"Do they work?"

"Say a number." I commanded.

"Okay, uh…three?"

"Three it is."

Jon leapt down to the table and looked at me strangely. "Three of what? Hey, you actually understood that."

"Of course I did. And to answer your questions, three coffees."

"That's unhealthy, you know," Rembrandt called in from the door, already heading out.

"I did not ask you," I answered, Jon and I following after. "Besides, a few coffees never hurt anyone."

()()()

The town itself was not very busy in the early morning, though there were a few people milling about on Main Street. I looked around to see if any of them looked like trainers, and soon caught sight of two PokeBalls around a particularly lanky mans waist. His hair was greasy and uncombed, his jacket and pants were ruffled, and he generally looked like a man who had either only woken up ten minutes ago or just returned from an all-night party. Suddenly self-conscious, I attempted to pat down my hair and then approached him.

"Hello, fine sir!" I greeted, the man wheeling around, revealing his very narrow face and piercing green eyes.

"What do you want?" he asked in monotone.

Pushing away thoughts of vaguely remembered horror films, I continued. "I am heading to the Unova region to do a presentation on some of my work, including a special Pokemon translation device, and I thought you might like to accompany me to help test it out."

"A translator?" he asked. "That sounds useful. Can you understand them?" He gestured to Jon and Rembrandt, whom I then realized looked very uncomfortable.

"Indeed. Would you like one?" I handed him the two earpieces, and upon inserting them, asked my Pokemon their names.

"I'm Rembrandt," came the answer, "And he's Jon."

"Hi!" Jon chirped.

"That's amazing." He observed, turning back to me. "I'm Ralph." He reached out a hand, and I shook it readily.

"Very well, then, Ralph! Glad to have you on board! Say, what sort of Pokemon do you possess?"

"Snakes." He answered. "A Seviper and a Serperior."

"A Serperior? Then you have been to Unova before."

"A few times. Very interesting Pokemon there. Pretty weird ones. Ever heard of a Klingklang?"

"I do not believe so."

"I'll show you around when we get there."

"Thank you. Now then, I have another pair of those, so I believe we should find another member for our group. I also would quite like some coffee, so perhaps we should tackle both items at once."

"Sounds good. I could use a pick-me-up."

With that, I recalled Rembrandt and Jon, and the two of us crossed the street and entered the coffee shop, looking for any viable trainers. Unfortunately, the shop was almost totally empty, and none of the few patrons looked like what we were looking for.

"Damn." I muttered. "Perhaps our luck might be better tried elsewhere."

I was about to make my order to the very bored looking cashier, but turned around upon hearing the door open, hoping for a trainer. My hopes were met entirely as I saw a fairly average-looking woman with long brown hair, and four PokeBalls about her belt.

"Hello there!" I asked, forgetting about my coffee. "What is your name?"

"Anne," she answered.

"Are you a trainer?"

"Yeah."

"Then might you be interested in heading to Unova with our little group?" I gestured towards Ralph, who waved awkwardly.

"Unova? That could be interesting. Why are you going?"

"Well, I was recently invited by none other than the esteemed Professor Oak to visit a seminar and present these," I pulled out the two remaining earpieces, "Pokemon translation devices."

"Ooh, translators?" she asked, picking them up and inserting them into her ears. "How well do they work?"

"Initial testing has suggested they work flawlessly." I said. "Would you care to see for yourself?"

"Could I get my coffee first?"

"Coffee?" I asked, looking around. "Oh, yes, that was why I came in here."

()()()

Several minutes later, after acquiring our coffees, we had gone to the local park so that Anne could display her Pokemon to us, and confirm the function of the translators.

"Alright, who first…" She pondered, looking at her PokeBalls.

"Could you hurry it up, please?" I asked, sipping my drink. "I have places to be and things to do."

"Your eye is twitching," Ralph noted.

"What are you talking about? No it isn't."

"You chugged your other two coffees straight down on the way here. Your eye is twitching."

"I'll tell you, I feel more alive right now than I ever have! Perhaps I should head back and get even more coffee!"

"So, Pokemon?" Anne interrupted. "Which one?"

"How about the one you've had the longest?" Ralph suggested.

"Good idea. Go, Bill!" She selected a ball and threw it, the red energy congealing into the shape of a massive Charizard. Instinctively, I ducked behind Ralph, who merely stared in awe.

"Who are these two?" Bill asked, leaning in towards us.

"He's Ralph, and the guy hiding behind him is Professor Larch. He made a translator, so I can understand you now."

Bill stared quizzically for a few moments, before smiling. "That's a pretty good invention on your part."

"Why, thank you." I said, stepping out from behind Ralph. "Very nice to meet you. What type of Pokemon does Anne train?"

"A bunch of big tough-looking softies, that's what." Bill chuckled. "Myself included."

"Hm." I was worried as to the identity of these supposed "softies", but I held off on that question. "Now that we have all met each other, shall we be off?"

The other two quickly voiced their approval, and after Anne retrieved her Charizard, we started to make our way for Vermillion City, unaware of the bizarre occurrences that would dot our journey.


	2. Lost and Found

A Reminiscence

Chapter Two

Lost and Found

()()()

"Okay, let's face it, we're lost." Ralph said, as the three of us, plus Rembrandt, who I had released a few hours earlier, walked upon a lovely forest trail.

"We are not lost!" I responded, carefully looking at the map.

"No, he's right, this doesn't look right at all," Rembrandt admonished. "I'm pretty sure we should have gotten there by now."

"I am the one with the map, and I assure you I have been following it to the letter! This is a very confusing map, I honestly have no idea who made this bizarre thing—"

Anne suddenly wrenched the map from my hands, looking at it with an expression of severe consternation.

"Um, a few things," she began. "Firstly, you were holding this upside down, and secondly, this is a topological map of eastern Sinnoh. You were following a canyon."

She shoved the map back into my chest, Ralph and Rembrandt both glaring at me as if I had insulted their mothers in the most severe manner. I quickly placed the map into a pocket and looked around, hoping I could see a useful landmark. I soon saw a large brown point rising up against the trees on the horizon, and pointed it out.

"Oh, yeah, we're way off," Rembrandt said. "Ain't no mountains anywhere on the route to Viridian."

"That's enough of this, let me get the correct map." Ralph began ruffling through his pack and pulled out the actual map, attempting to get his bearings. When he did, he was quite displeased.

"That's Mt. Moon," he said finally. "We've been going in completely the opposite direction we were supposed to be going."

"Thanks, Larch," Anne deadpanned. "Now what?"

"Er, if you wouldn't mind a suggestion, it might be interesting to at least take a look at Mt. Moon." The others stared at me, as I attempted to justify my idea. "I mean, it is one of the most important landmarks in Kanto, and it is regarded as being quite beautiful…and besides, we've plenty of time! It has barely even been a day, we have little need to rush the journey!" I smiled awkwardly, hoping the other two would have some amount of mercy on me. After a few tense seconds, Anne brightened up quite significantly.

"Actually, yeah, that would be pretty interesting. I've heard there are some really cool Pokémon in there somewhere!"

"Very good, then!" I turned to Ralph. "Well, how about you?"

He merely groaned and mumbled out what sounded like "Fine."

"Very well then! Onwards!"

"Oh, no, you are not leading the way," Anne said, pushing past me. "You'll probably just take us back to Lavender."

"Oh, come now, my sense of direction is not that terrible."

"Yes, it is," Ralph said, pushing past me as well. I frowned deeply, and then followed them, hoping that would be the end of that.

Thankfully, Ralph seemed to have lost interest in my error, and Anne was more interested in rambling off a series of (probably false) rumors she had heard about Mt. Moon. Eventually, we came to a fork in the road, one path heading towards the great mountain and the other away from it.

"Well, this is obvious," I said. "We must head north."

"Yeah, knowing you, that probably leads into a cave or something." Ralph smirked.

"Oh, come now, this really is a lovely forest, you should be glad we came here."

"I'd rather be where we're supposed to be, dumbass!"

"Watch your language, mister, I may have made a slight error—"

"Slight? SLIGHT? You call this," he gestured to the forest around us, "a slight error? This is a disaster! We're going to miss the boat!"

"It does not set sail for some time, Ralph. If we had actually gone to Viridian, we would just have ended up waiting about like a bunch of useless…"

"Hey, newlyweds, cram it!" Rembrandt suddenly yelled, an annoyed edge quite obvious in his voice. "I hear someone coming!"

"What?" I asked. His ears, being quite large, were much more keen than those of any human, and we thus had no idea what he was talking about.

"From down that path!" He pointed down the left path, and sure enough, we saw a man cresting the hill we were on, who was wearing a very familiar ensemble: solid black, with a large red "R" on the shirt.

"Damn!" I said, realizing what he was part of. "A Team Rocket grunt!"

"Team Rocket?" Anne asked. "Those are those useless guys, right?"

"Despite what you may have heard about them, I assure you, Team Rocket is quite vicious," I explained. "We must hide, or he will probably kill us all and steal all our Pokémon!"

"Um…" the grunt said, having walked up to us. The four of us wheeled around in surprise, not knowing what to do. "I was actually just headed down the path. Also, we don't just kill people at random, I'll let you know, we have a very specific way of doing…"

He was interrupted by Anne yelling out "Dante!" and revealing a great hellhound, a Houndoom, that infamous creature of darkness…who immediately leapt upon the criminal and began happily licking at his face, as the goon panicked wildly, flailing about and screaming about how Dante was "eating his face off".

"Down, boy!" Anne said, stepping to the cowering goon, getting an idea. "Where's your base?" she demanded.

"I'm…I'm not telling you."

"Well, we know it is probably somewhere over there," I pointed out. "We could easily search for it. We have more than enough manpower between us and our Pokemon."

"You'll never find it!" he yelled. "No other team has better hidden bases than we do!"

"Look, tell me where the base is or I'll actually have Dante eat your face off," Anne responded.

"What?" Dante asked, finally chiming in. "I don't want to eat his face. He smells like cheap cologne and beer."

Anne stifled a laugh and looked back down. "Wow, he's certainly creative when he wants to be. Now, I'll ask again before he tries to eat you: where is the base?"

The goon looked one last time at Dante (who was glaring quite strongly at Anne), wondering what horrid things were supposedly lying within his brain at the moment (for he did not have a translator of any sort), and finally cracked. "Okay, it's down that path! The first tree on the left at the base of the hill is a fake entrance!"

"See? You could have just said all that and saved us all the trouble!" she said. "Now how about you go turn yourself into the police while we take a look at your base?"

He nodded and clambered up, then ran off as Dante shot Anne a very dirty look.

"That was completely unnecessary!" He admonished. "Not to mention using our stereotypes so callously! I'll have you know, we Houndoom are a proud and gentle race, and would never even consider tearing a man's face off…"

As he continued his rambling, we began talking about the plan.

"So, now what?" Ralph asked. "We know where the base is, do we report it to the police?"

"I think we should check to ensure the base is actually there first," I proposed. "We might get fined for wasting their time otherwise."

"Hey, what if we just took them down here and now?" Rembrandt offered. "Think of the reward money we'll get! And if we take down this base, we might be able to get info that can help the police take care of them once and for all!"

"I like the sound of that plan!" Anne concurred. "We should do that!"

"What?" I asked. "That's absurd! We don't have nearly enough manpower to do such a thing!"

"Oh, please, it'll probably just be a bunch of bored losers with Rattata and stuff," Rembrandt countered. "Might not even have guns."

"Good point," began Ralph. "I heard that Team Rocket just puts them out here in places like this to poach Slowpoke for their tails. I doubt they'll be heavily armed."

"B-b-but…" I sputtered, before slouching in defeat. "Fine, we can go into the base ourselves. Be prepared to bring out your Pokemon in case things go south, though."

We all nodded and headed off, having reached an agreement and Dante having reached the end of his rant.

It took us only a few minutes to reach the base of the hill, and the false tree was immediately obvious from almost everything about it: it resembled no actual species, the trunk had no texture or even ridges in the plastic bark, and the leaves were quite obviously just fabric.

"Oh, this is embarrassing," I said, taking the whole of the tree into account. "How in the hell could this have fooled anyone?"

"They're colorblind and stupid?" Anne suggested.

"Even then, this is terribly obvious." I knocked upon the false trunk and a deep, hollow note rang out. "No wonder nobody takes Team Rocket seriously."

"Okay, so how do we get in?" Rembrandt asked. "Is there, like, a secret code or something?"

"I think if we just knock it over it'll reveal something." Ralph suggested.

"Would we be able to do that?" I asked. "This does seem quite firm in the ground."

"Maybe if we cut it open?" Dante asked.

"With what?" I asked.

"Ooh, I know!" Anne suddenly yelled, pulling out another Pokeball. "I just taught Bill Steel Wing, maybe he could use it on that?"

I considered this option for a moment. "…Actually, that is quite brilliant. Give it a go!"

Anne nodded and released the Charizard, who looked around in confusion.

"Where are we?"

"Near Mt. Moon," Anne said. "Could you use Steel Wing on that very obviously fake tree?"

"I guess?" He bucked up and put out his left wing, running head-on at the false tree and bouncing off of it immediately.

"Ow! What the hell?" He asked, rubbing his slightly injured wing.

"It deflected a Steel Wing attack?" I wondered aloud. "What is this tree made of?"

"Wait, I have an idea!" Ralph said, walking up to the tree and looking it over a few times. After his inspection was complete, he kicked the base of the tree with the heel of his shoe, which had no discernible effect.

I shook my head a few moments, attempting to comprehend his logic. "How could you possibly think that would work? Why would just kicking the base of the tree at random reveal anything of importa—?"

I was interrupted when a hidden panel slid up, revealing what appeared to be some sort of elevator hidden within the tree.

"Wh…how…that…" I sputtered as Anne recalled Bill and Dante and walked over to Ralph.

"Nice job," she congratulated, climbing inside. "Should we go down?"

"That's what we're here for, isn't it?" Ralph retorted, climbing in with her. I followed her in, first recalling Rembrandt after a moment's recovery.

"So, which level do we want to go on?" I asked, observing a keypad that was labeled one through four.

"The deepest one is probably the command center for the whole thing," Ralph postulated. "If we take that over, contact the police…path of least resistance, really."

"But surely that area would be the most heavily guarded?" I asked.

"With what, exactly? What would the command center guys have? Surely it would be the thugs that would be heavily armed?"

"They would probably have thugs there, with machine guns. I heard they used tear gas and flash bangs as well. And of course, very high-level Pokemon that know outlawed techniques."

"I have a fire-breathing dragon, a literal hellhound, a giant fire dog, and a vicious bastard of a canine. I think we can beat them."

"This is very risky, you all realiz,." I said, reaching over to press the button that would take us to the bottom level.

"Eh, risks are worth taking, and besides, I'm bored," Ralph shrugged, as the door closed and we descended, discussing what we should do.

()()()

After some time, we reached the bottom level, holding out the PokeBalls of our most powerful members. As the counter finally switched from three to four, we tensed up, then enacted the plan we had come up with. The doors opened, revealing a small, dimly lit room with two desks, each with two computers and someone manning them, along with a mini-fridge and an emergency exit.

Before any of the men were able to react to our intrusions, a red flash appeared, congealing into the form of Bill, who roared at them quite fiercely as a way of greeting. The group of men evidently paid the greeting no mind, however, as they all panicked and ducked behind the desks in fear of the massive dragon.

"Alright, here's how it's going to work!" Ralph said, stepping out of the elevator next to Bill. "You give us control of the command center or we burn this mother down!"

"Uh, we might be somewhat lenient on that part, though!" I shouted from inside the elevator. "We would not want to cause a safety problem, after all!"

Ralph rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then looked back up. "Alright, where's the PA system?"

One of the thugs gestured to a button in the corner to the left of us, which Ralph quickly made use of. I attempted to voice a concern, but had no chance to as Ralph began a false announcement.

"Alright, everyone, listen up, we've got an emergency situation down here, so please evacuate at once through the nearest exit. Do not panic, we'll try to get this under control as soon as possible. Thank you." Ralph released the button, and then pulled out a vial of something from his coat.

"Uh, say, Ralph, what would that happen to be in there?" I asked, but I received no answer. Instead, Ralph simply threw the vial, which broke apart into a cloud of purple dust. When it cleared, the men were out cold.

"Was that concentrated Sleep Powder?" I asked. "Isn't that illegal to possess?"

"I have a license," Ralph answered. A knock on the exit door suddenly rang through the room, causing us all to tense up. Anne quickly recalled Bill, and I reached for Artie's PokeBall.

"What's going on in there?" a deep, gravelly voice from the other side of the door asked. "We heard there was an issue."

"Uh, don't worry, it's fine now, everything under control," Ralph blurted out, gesturing for us all to duck down behind a desk. We did so, and waited for a few moments before the door opened and to our sudden shock, a loud volley of automatic fire rang out, tearing through the computer screens and sending sparks flying everywhere.

"Holy—!" I shouted, ducking my head down so as to avoid being punctured by one of the bullets.

Ralph, evidently, had no such qualms, as he had somehow produced a sizeable handgun and leapt out, firing several shots of his own and forcing the men to hide themselves, temporarily stopping the fire.

"What the hell was that?!" I yelled, trying to collect myself after nearly overdosing on raw adrenalin.

"Okay, yeah, in hindsight, doing the PA thing was a bad plan," Ralph noted. "And now we're in a standoff."

"What's this 'we' stuff?" Anne demanded. "You're the only one of us that actually has a gun!"

Ralph quickly produced a second handgun and handed it to me, but I panicked and fumbled about with it for several seconds before getting a good grip on it.

"You realize I have no idea how to use one of these, correct?" I deadpanned. Ralph groaned and took it back, then leapt across the gap, firing both guns wildly at the enemies. Although not even a single one hit successfully, he managed to put them in enough of a panic (although it was doubtlessly, in part, sheer awe) that he was able to run up to them and do a rapid series of complex judo techniques to disable them all in a matter of seconds and seize an assault rifle.

"Holy shit!" Anne yelled, staring at the dispatched men in awe. "Where the hell did you learn to do that?"

Ralph looked down at the thugs, then back to us. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that at the moment."

"Oh, that's not worrying at all," I said.

"Yeah, yeah," Ralph replied, picking one of the men up and walking over to the PA again. Slowly, the man came to, and realized his predicament.

"Hey, what is this? What's going on here?" he demanded.

"I beat you and your friends up. Now tell everyone that the situation is under control."

"What? No!" The man struggled, but Ralph shook his collar repeatedly until he gave in. "Alright, fine." He rudely pressed the button, and informed the rest of the base that the situation had been contained. Upon completing the task, Ralph smashed his head against the wall, knocking him out instantly.

"I think you might have just given him a concussion." I said, looking at an alarming bruise that had started to form on his forehead.

"He'll be fine once the police get in here," He said, pulling out a cell phone.

"From all the way down here?" Anne asked. "We're like, a hundred feet underground."

Ralph looked up. "Oh, yeah. We'll need to get up some."

"Perhaps we could take that emergency exit?" I offered. "The police will probably have to use that, so it would be useful to know where exactly it leads to."

"Good idea, Larch," Ralph commended. "We should probably put on these guy's clothing as a disguise."

Anne and I glanced at each other, before responding with a sound "No."

"Come on, guys, we need to disguise ourselves so the thugs won't recognize us!"

"Have you possibly considered not opening the doors and letting them see us?" I asked.

Ralph raised a finger, ready to protest, then put it back down when he realized my idea was better and would not reveal anything potentially unpleasant.

"Also, could you put that away? It is starting to make me quite nervous." I pointed to the assault rifle he had grabbed, which he gingerly set onto the ground.

"No, hold on, I think you should take that with you, just in case," Anne suggested.

"Is that thing even licensed?" I countered. "I highly doubt something like that is legally owned, especially considering Team Rocket."

"I think it would be best to just leave it here," Ralph decided. "I don't want to keep something they probably stole."

"Very well, then, let's head back up."

()()()

As we made our way up the stairs, not much happened, although we realized that we were very lucky to only have a few thugs sent down, since the third-level casino had the exit door wide open, and it contained almost a small army, although luckily for us, all of them were distracted with the likely-rigged games of luck.

Of course, as said before, not much actually happened, and we left the base entirely through a disguised trapdoor.

"I must say, they did a much better job on the trapdoor than the tree," I said. "Who has a phone?"

"I do!" Anne said, pulling it out and dialing in 911 in a single movement.

"Hello, police?" she asked. "We've found a Team Rocket base in the forest outside of Mt. Moon." She paused as the man on the other side asked a question. "Uh, we found a Rocket goon walking around and we got him to tell us where the base was. It was an elevator hidden in a really bad fake tree." She paused once more. "You already have my location? Okay, good, are you sending anyone over?" Another pause. "I'm sorry, how many was that? Wow, really? That many? And the helicopters, too? Okay, good. Bye." She put the phone back in her pocket, and turned back to us.

"How many are they sending over?" Ralph asked.

"Like, a small army. They must really want to take these guys down."

"Well, Team Rocket has been a thorn in their side for decades. This probably will be quite important for them."

"Perhaps we should just leave them to it, then. I think it would be a rather poor idea to stick around here," I suggested.

"They might want to ask us a few questions, though," Ralph countered. "I think it would be best for us to stay here instead of leaving."

"I'm with him," Anne said.

I thought about the options for a moment. "Very well, we shall stay here."

We milled around for a few minutes, until we suddenly heard the sound of several helicopters and heavily armored trucks coming towards us. Soon after, a large blockade of SWAT trucks pulled up next to the tree and three helicopters touched down next to them, and a small army clambered out of them, some holding large body shields. As they did so, an investigator walked towards us.

"Are you the ones who called?" He asked.

"That is correct," I said.

"Where's the entrance to…whatever this thing is?" he asked, gesturing towards the "tree".

"Right there." Anne said, pointing to the trapdoor entrance. A small group of the SWAT members ran over and forced it open, the rest of them pushing past us and clambering down the stairs. A few moments later, the sound of a smoke grenade and shouting people came from below, although it was quickly silenced and replaced with shouting orders to get to the lower levels.

"Uh…" I began.

"Don't worry, they'll have a handle on the situation," he said. "Who are you?"

Ralph walked up to him and pulled out his wallet, showing the investigator something within it. "They're with me."

"…I see," he said. "Very well, then, I'll just leave you to yourselves. Now, on the subject of reward money…"

"Reward money?" I asked, suddenly very interested.

"Fifty thousand dollars for any information regarding Team Rocket leading directly to arrest of their constituent members or leaders. You've quite obviously done so, so…" he pulled a cheque out of his coat, handing it to Ralph. "Here you are."

"Uh, Ralph?" I asked, gesturing for him to come aside. When he did so, I leaned in and started asking questions.

"Who are you and why did the investigator stop asking questions?"

He looked at me in a very honest way, and then replied, "I'm very important. That's all you need to know."

"Are you done?" the investigator asked. We both turned around, nodding. "Where were you headed?"

"We were going towards Vermillion City," Anne explained, "but Magellan here was using the wrong map and now we're out in this place."

"Well, in that case, I can't help you much. We came over from Viridian, and using a helicopter for that purpose would be highly inappropriate."

"Thanks anyway," Ralph said. "Say, Anne, would it be possible for Bill to carry us there?"

"I don't know, I've never tried."

"I think it's worth a shot," I said.

"Well, alright then!" Anne pulled out Bill's PokeBall and released him, telling him the plan, much to the investigator's confusion.

"Did you just talk in Pokémon speak?" he asked.

"Ah, yes, I can be thanked for that," I said, pulling out my translator. "You see, this brilliant invention of mine can translate between Pokémon speech and human speech perfectly, allowing for total connection between trainers and their teams. Quite brilliant, if I do say so myself."

"Is that so…" he said.

"Anyway, I think we should really be off, since you seem to have the situation handled perfectly," I said, pointing to the officers coming back up from the hidden base, holding the various goons in custody. "Thank you for your assistance!"

"You're quite welcome, sir," he responded. "You've done Kanto a great service today."

As Ralph and I climbed onto Bill's back, I could not shake the feeling that the investigator, whoever he was, seemed quite interested in me, and kept staring at us as we flew off…


	3. Hidden Memories

A Reminiscence

Chapter Three

Hidden Memories

()()()

The flight was greatly impressive, and I can honestly say that having never even flown before that time. We were not especially high up, due to the great danger of falling, but still travelling at great speeds towards our destination, Vermilion City, containing the S.S. Anne, and thus, eventually, Unova.

It was about midway through the journey, however, where things started to go downhill…or rather, just down. I was explaining some of the technology behind my translator to a rather uncaptivated audience, when I noticed that Bill's flight was beginning to approach the ground.

"Say, Bill, am I boring you?" I asked, somewhat cross.

"W-wha?" He stammered. "Oh, sorry…it's just that I've never flown for this long before. By all means, continue talki—" he suddenly fell completely asleep, and we started plummeting even faster, though he was still gliding somewhat, so we were not quite in free-fall. Anne started screaming, jolting awake Ralph, who had also fallen asleep at some point. He, however, did not seem particularly fazed by what was happening.

"Jesus Christ, wake up, you idiot!" I yelled, attempting to shake Bill awake. Ralph looked at me with a look of great annoyance.

"I'm already awake, dad, jeez." He muttered, laying back down.

"Oh, forget you!" I yelled, slapping Bill on the cheek repeatedly. Eventually, just a few meters up from the ground, the Charizard rose from his slumber, and pulled up, coming to a gentle landing before falling asleep once again.

"Well, that was alarming." I said, climbing off. "Does that happen often?"

"Bill does overestimate himself a lot." Anne said, putting him back in his PokeBall, causing Ralph to fall to the ground and finally awake. "Where are we, anyway?"

"Uh…" I stopped as I realized we were actually quite lost. "Slight problem with that. I don't know."

"What? We're lost _again?!_" Anne shouted.

"Well, I mean, this time we are actually fairly close to our destination." I said" "Perhaps we should look around and get our bearings?"

"No need." Ralph said, looking off into the distance. "I know exactly where we are."

"What?" I asked. "Where are we?"

"Look over there." He said, pointing off in the direction he was looking. Anne and I looked at it, and lo and behold, we saw a sign proclaiming that we were near Celadon City, the largest city in Kanto.

"How convenient!" Anne said, and we all started walking there. However, we were paused when a man wearing a very odd purple suit and white cape walked out, looking quite interested in something.

"Hello there." I greeted. "What is your name?"

"I am Eusine." He greeted looking us all over. "Who are you three? You're not here for Suicune, are you?"

"The Avatar of the North Wind?" I asked. "No, we have no interest in such things. Besides, I already have a legendary."

The man stared at me for a moment, looking absolutely furious. "Which one?" He finally asked.

"Shaymin. Rather common by normal legendary standards, I admit, but a very elusive creature nonetheless. It took quite the effort to find him." I smiled, recalling the adventure I had taken to acquire it.

"How much effort?" He asked.

"Well, it did take several months to get it, and quite a bit of tracking…"

"How did you finally get it?" Eusine asked.

I rubbed my neck and gave my answer. "I finally realized it was moving around too much for me to be able to chase it down, so I simply stayed put until it came to me, and that was that. I wish I had figured that out sooner, to be honest."

Eusine looked away, digesting my words. "No…no! It can't possibly be that simple! You're lying! Show me that you caught it! Show me!"

"Hey, back off!" Ralph demanded, stepping up next to us.

"I refuse!" Eusine shouted, grabbing at my pack and yanking it off, running away with everything I had (except, thankfully, the translator).

"Wha—I say! Come back here!" I shouted. "Ruffian! Damn it, that had all of my things…" My eyes widened in horror as I realized just what that meant. "My god, he has Rembrandt! And Jon! And Shaymin! Oh, this is terrible! What could be worse?!"

"The fact that Ralph just started chasing after him?" Anne suggested. I looked at the direction Eusine ran off to, seeing that Ralph had, indeed, given chase.

"Oh, brilliant." I muttered. "What if he does not get them back? I have had Rembrandt for as long as I can remember! Not to mention Jon and Shaymin…what tragedy!"

"Oh, give it a rest!" Anne demanded. "Did you see that shit he pulled back in the base! He's got this! Relax!"

"I don't know. If that man has spent as long as he claims chasing after such a swift and elusive Legendary, he must have grown to have great skills."

"Yeah, but he still hasn't caught that damn thing. He can't be that good."

"He probably is quite good, though, it is simply that Suicune is perpetually better. I am going to go chase after him as well."

With that, I left to take back what was mine, and I glanced back at Anne, seeing she had pulled out a Pokémon I had never seen her use before…

Still, I soon ended up in Celadon, which was not like many other cities; while others may have used great gleaming towers of glass and steel, Celadon was a massive sprawl of buildings that did not rise very far at all, but spread out a very far distance indeed.

"Bloody hell, he could be anywhere!" I shouted, but in the distance, there came the sound of a shouting crowd and breaking glass.

"What on Earth was that?" I ran over to the source of the sound, seeing a small farmer's market had been set up in a plaza, and that a cart of melons had been tipped over. I looked above it to see that Ralph and Eusine both had used it as a platform to propel themselves on top of an apartment flat, upon which they were now fighting quite viciously.

"Bloody hell…" I muttered, looking around for any policemen. I saw one, but it seemed he was several steps ahead of me, since he was talking into his dispatch radio about a fight going on atop a roof. I relaxed for a moment, but that relaxation was short lived as I saw him pull out a handgun and walk towards them.

"I say, sir, wait!" I said, hoping this would not escalate much further. "That man in the purple suit stole my things, the other one has merely attempted to retrieve them!"

"The purple suit guy? You mean Eusine?"

"Indeed! He stole all of my clothes, toiletries, and most horrendously, my Pokémon!"

The officer sighed. "I should have expected he'd pull something like this one of these days. Who's the other guy?"

"A friend of mine who is attempting to retrieve them. I think he might be part of some military operation."

"Look, they're making a ruckus, and I can't have that. Look at all those perfectly good melons they ruined!"

"Yes, a real tragedy." I smirked. "I am far more concerned with my stolen property!"

"Look, sir, I'll take care of it, but that friend of yours has broken the law, and if you continue interfering, I'll arrest both of you!"

"What!" I cried. "How can you arrest me? I have broken no law!"

"You're interfering with justice!"

"Let go, asshole!" Ralph suddenly cried. I turned to face the action, and although we were at quite a distance from each other, I could tell that he had managed to wrench away the bag. Eusine ran off, leaping onto a fire escape and sliding down the side into the alley. The cop started running towards him, but the thief produced a flash pellet and threw it upon the ground, distracting the cop long enough for him to take leave entirely.

"Damn it!" Ralph yelled, running into the stairwell. A minute later, he came out of the back door, pulling out his wallet once more.

"I have this situation under control, sir," he said, flipping it open and revealing a very particular symbol: a silhouette of a Pidgeotto in front of a rising sun.

"Wha—" I began. "You are with Special Command?"

"Yes," he answered, putting his wallet back. The officer seemed rightfully content with this explanation and walked off, pulling out his radio to call for a search.

"I thought they disbanded a few years after the war ended, though?"

"Technically, yes, though the members still retained their authority. It comes in handy fairly often, I find. You know what they say: old habits die hard."

I narrowed my eyes, suddenly becoming suspicious of his exact intentions. "Why did you start coming with me on this journey? Rather odd for a member of Special Command to just head out on vacation like this."

Ralph thought for a moment. "There are several reasons. For one, I was getting bored with Kanto, two, I was interested in your technology, and three, I thought it would be pertinent to see how Unova's doing these days, considering they just opened up."

I narrowed my eyes. "One and three, I understand, but you worded number two very interestingly."

"I'm not going to steal it!" Ralph yelled. "I have no idea how it even works! It wouldn't be any use to me!"

I glared for a moment more, but then decided he was most likely right. I grabbed the bag containing my things, but soon made a terrible discovery.

"Oh, my god…" I muttered, sifting through it and hoping I had simply made a mistake. Unfortunately, I was right: Rembrandt's PokeBall was missing, and the only explanation was that Eusine had taken it, perhaps thinking it was Shaymin's.

"What is it?" Ralph asked, peering inside. I quickly pulled it away and put my hand to my forehead, unwilling to believe that this had occurred.

"He's stolen Rembrandt. Oh my god, he has Rembrandt…"

Ralph stepped back, taken off guard by this. "That's…okay, look, just remain calm and we can…"

"Remain calm?!" I burst, pointing a finger at him. "How could you possibly tell me to remain calm at a time like this! I have had Rembrandt for years! He has been by my side ever since I started my research, and now he has been wrenched away from me by the cruel hand of fate! Oh, but excuse me for not being utterly placid at every…"

"Uh, Larch?" Ralph asked, looking very uncomfortable.

"WHAT?!" I yelled, before realzing my rant had attracted quite a crowd of disturbed onlookers.

"Uh…" I stammered out. "Don't mind me, just…dealing with a minor problem. Uh, say, Ralph, would it be wise to take our leave at this point?"

"Very wise." He answered, and we both made haste out of the market.

Soon, we came across Anne, who seemed to have been running towards us, and also seemed very concerned.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, coming to a stop before us. "I could hear you all the way from the forest."

"Oh…dear, was I really yelling that loudly?" I muttered, rubbing my head.

"Well, maybe not. I do have really good hearing, and I couldn't tell what you were saying. What were you yelling about, anyway?"

"Eusine has Rembrandt."

Anne started, her eyes widening in shock. "That's terrible! What would he even need him for?"

"I know not. Perhaps he thought it was Shaymin and intended to steal him."

"Oh, man…wait, I have an idea!" Anne produced a PokeBall and threw it in front of her. As the red energy took the shape of a Mightyena, we both stepped back, somewhat shocked.

"Who is this?" Ralph asked, as the Pokémon sniffed at my bag, apparently catching the scent of Eusine off it.

"What do you smell, Henry?" Anne asked.

"Cheap polyester suit…bad cologne…hey, are you sure it isn't this guy?" He looked at me, and I glared back at him as harshly as I could. "Wait…wow, this guy really reeks. What'd he do?"

"He got into a scuffle with him over that bag, but he still has something really important from it." Anne explained. "Would you be able to find him?"

"I think. That city looks pretty big, though…wow." He started rubbing his nose, and I noticed his eyes had actually begun to water. "That's really strong."

"He must be near…" I muttered.

"Okay, hold on, we can't just rush into this." Ralph said. "He might be dangerous."

We suddenly heard something rustling in the nearby forest, and all of us quickly prepared for a fight.

"Come out, you coward!" I yelled, putting up my fists. There was another rustle, and then, surprisingly, Rembrandt popped out, holding his own PokeBall.

"Rembrandt?" I asked, quite confused. "I thought you were Eusine."

"You need to get your glasses checked," he responded, tossing the ball to me. "He let me out once he realized I wasn't that weird grass thingy."

"Shaymin, you mean."

"Yeah, that."

"He just…let you out?" Ralph asked. "That's weird…"

"Is it?" We turned around, and saw Eusine pointing an alarmingly large revolver at us, harshly glaring at me. "All right, then, hands up." He turned to me, waving the gun around a bit for effect. "It is my opinion that we can reach a fair agreement. Hand me the Shaymin, and tell me how I can get Suicune, and you get to continue living. Sounds fair?"

"That strikes me as something of a false choice," I said.

"It is still a choice. Now, if you would only just—" Ralph suddenly lunged at him and grabbed the gun, but found that Eusine's grip on it was very strong indeed. As the two of them struggled, I pulled out my phone again and dialed for the police.

"Hello, did you get that warning about that Eusine fellow? Ah, yes, good, I have him here, and a friend of mine is struggling with—" A loud retort rang out, and a bullet whizzed past my head, very nearly taking out my phone and, with it, me. "…him." I whispered.

"Where are you?" The operator asked.

"I am just outside of the western marketplace, in the forest!" I yelped as another shot flew past, and both Rembrandt and Anne dove behind me. "Goodbye!"

"Let…go!" Ralph yelled, finally wrenching the gun out and pointing it at Eusine.

"Whoa!" He yelled, putting his gloved hands up in concern. "Let's not get too hasty here, we can all work this out…"

He threw his left hand down, and with it, a small smoke pellet, which produced a thick cloud in such volume that he quite easily managed to run away.

"Damn it!" I yelled. "Again!"

"At least he doesn't have anything important this time." Ralph said, putting the gun away.

"Indeed, that is…damn it!" I yelled, noticing something missing. "He has Rembrandt again!"

"He seemed upset." Ralph said. "Rembrandt might be in danger."

"Oh, thank you, Ralph, that helped." I forced out. "We must rescue him!"

"Henry," Anne said, pointing at the direction Eusine ran off, "sic."

Immediately, the vicious creature ran off, snarling in anger. The rest of us followed quite a distance behind, keeping an eye on his movements. Soon, he cornered into an alley stuck in between two absolute dive bars, but we all quickly stopped as we saw that Eusine was holding Rembrandt up and had another gun to his head.

"Um…help?" The Smeargle implored. I was, at that point, in a severe panic, and was jittering about as I had no idea what to do.

Ralph, however, did seem to have an idea of what could be done, as he slowly approached Eusine, which he seemed to accept. "Alright, look, Eusine, we can talk about this. Just set the Smeargle down, and we can…"

"Tell the bald guy to give me the Shaymin," he demanded back. I scoffed slightly, but Ralph ignored me and continued the negotiations.

"Give us the hostage now, sir, and we'll do what you want."

"I know how this works," Eusine said, pressing the gun in harder. "You say you'll do whatever I want if I release him, and then you jump me. I've read the papers."

Ralph paused, considering his now very limited options. "Okay…uh…Larch, could you hand me the Shaymin?"

Immediately after his question, I noticeably balked. "What?! Ralph, are you mental?"

"No, look, Larch, we can all come out of this with what we want." He turned to me and held his hand out, very subtly winking. I caught his gist, and made a show of reluctantly handing him the PokeBall that held Shaymin.

"Okay, we'll do this at the same time," Ralph suggested. "I give you the Shaymin, and you give me Rembrandt."

"That's a stupid idea." Rembrandt said. Eusine shook him around to shut him up, and then walked up to Ralph to perform the transfer.

"Okay, on three, all right?" Ralph said, holding the PokeBall up. "One, two, three…"

Eusine, to his credit, did hand over Rembrandt, but I knew Ralph aimed to retrieve the Shaymin as well. I figured out his plan when, out of nowhere, he tossed the PokeBall up in the air. Eusine looked up for but a moment in shock, instinctively putting out his hand to catch it. This was more than enough for Ralph, who grabbed his forearm and, using his other arm, elbowed him in the solar plexus, then twisted Eusine's arm behind him and forced him to the ground quite hard, and, to end it, nonchalantly caught the falling PokeBall, which I quickly retrieved.

"Is he alright?" I asked, noticing that he did not appear to be moving.

"He still has his pulse, don't worry. He's just in shock. Hang on a minute." He got off of Eusine, having noticed a police car driving down the road, and yelled "Hey, officer!" It quickly pulled over, the two men inside egressed, and then walked over, nodding to Ralph as they put a pair of handcuffs on Eusine, got him up, and walked him off.

"Well, then, that was…interesting." I said. "Um…thank you very much for your help, Ralph."

"Yeah, thanks," said Rembrandt, rubbing his head. "Can we go to a hotel now or something?"

"It is getting rather late in the day," I observed. "It would be wise to set down here for today and then go to Vermilion tomorrow."

"Sounds good," Anne said. "Henry, return!"

I, too, recalled Rembrandt, and so we all went off to look for a suitable hotel. However, as we left the alleyway and went back onto the street, I could not shake the most peculiar feeling that, somehow, I was being watched…


	4. Taken Again

A Reminiscence

Chapter Four

Taken Again

()()()

A hotel was not particularly difficult to find in the large city; within a few blocks, we found a nice, old-fashioned three-story building whose sign pronounced itself as the "Gala Premiere", and indeed it did seem premiere, though admittedly somewhat dated.

"This looks absolutely perfect." I said. "Lovely theme."

"I don't know, these old-timey places always smell like Listerine and soap." Anne said, looking disdainfully at the hotel.

"Nonsense, Anne! That smell simply adds to the charm, and quite a charm it is, might I add."

"Can we please just get a room already?" Ralph moaned. "It's starting to feel less and less safe out here. I really don't want to get robbed."

"Hm…" I considered that thought for a moment. "Yes…I do have a rather uncomfortable feeling…"

"Yeah, that Eusine guy was a weirdo," Anne added.

"No, no, I felt odd before that all happened. Something seems…odd. I think we should check in and get some rest. We will probably be safer in there."

()()()

Checking into the room was uneventful, although Anne was right in that there was a distinct smell of Listerine and old soap. Also correct was the assumption that it would feel somewhat dated; the décor was something my grandmother, bless her soul, would have been likely to have in her house. Lace doilies, dark green wallpaper, strange trimming, and pictures of generically picturesque scenes somehow connected to make a theme that was simultaneously comfortable and utterly nauseating. As some consolation, it did have a rather nice television.

"Well…regardless of the design choices, it at least has beds," I said, setting my bags down and picking up the remote. I flipped through a few of the channels, but found little of interest.

"Ech. Nothing on the telly these days, I swear." I switched it off, and removed my earpieces.

"What are you doing?" Anne asked.

"Well, I could hardly leave them in all the time, they would get filthy and my ear may get infected. More than that, they may permanently damage my hearing if kept in constantly, and at my age, I do not need my hearing any worse than it already is. I would suggest you two do the same."

Anne and Ralph glanced at each other, and both of them took theirs out as well and handed them to me.

"I think we should put these in that drawer there," I said, gesturing towards the small bedside table that had a lamp and some old gardening magazines upon it. "I wonder if they have…" I asked, opening to see if it contained the traditional Gideon Bible. "Yes, they do!" I pulled it out, revealing that at least half the pages had been removed crudely from the binding at some point. Flipping it open, I found that almost the entire New Testament was completely gone.

"Thou shalt not steal indeed." I threw the ruined tome into the bin and placed our translators in the cabinet.

"All right then," I said. "I think we should ready ourselves for bed then."

"What?" Anne asked. "It's still light out."

"Is it?" I turned to the window, and saw that it was, indeed, still quite bright outside. "Ah, my apologies. It seems with all that happened today, I thought it was much later than it was."

"Um, I have a question," Anne spoke up. "How are we gonna split the beds?"

"Well, there are three of us and two beds." I observed. "Two of us will have to share."

Anne looked between Ralph and I, and came to a decision.

"Well, I can't, in good conscience, allow any of those combinations to happen so I'll just sleep on the floor and let you two have a bed to yourself. Sound good?"

I nodded, and so too did Ralph.

"Of course," I said, "that will not be necessary for some hours, so perhaps we should have something to eat in the meantime."

"Now, there's an idea," Ralph said, immediately leaving the room so he could dine. Anne and I followed as well, hoping there would be something pleasant to eat.

()()()

The dining hall was decorated as expected: an ancient chandelier in the Baroque style, mahogany furniture that was chipped and worn, tables barely covered by thinning white cloth, and so on. I was beginning to question the choice of hotel, but thankfully, the food prepared smelled pleasant, and it seemed that the service was prompt enough.

"Well, this hotel just keeps getting better and better, Larch," Ralph said, looking at a set of cutlery that had been set out, and appeared to be half made of pure tetanus.

"It…still has a certain…charm to it…" I attempted to argue. "Besides, the food seems quality enough."

"That's the only thing in this dump that's quality," a voice came from behind us. We turned around, shocked to see a colossal man of perfect tone and figure, and flawless, long blond hair tied in a ponytail. He was easily recognizable, since he was one of the most popular actors on the planet: Clive Warren.

"I know you," Ralph said, an emotion, shock, finally showing on his face. "What are you doing in here?"

"I'm working on a brand-new hit TV show where I critique bad hotels, and so far, the only redeemable part of this one is the food. Hey, I should use that for the bumper."

"Is it really that terrible, though?" My attempts at defending the hotel were increasingly desperate; if Clive Warren had chosen it for a show explicitly about bad hotels, there had to be very little to defend.

"Don't tell me you poor bastards checked in already," he chided. "Good luck sleeping in these beds. I ran 'em under a blacklight and I'm pretty sure the last time they were cleaned was when they got these decorations."

Anne glared at me. "Good job, Berkeley."

Recognizing that I had, indeed, made a very poor choice, I quietly excused myself from the room so as not to embarrass myself further, and so Clive could continue producing whatever show he was making.

"I had better do something to make up for this garbage dump," I muttered to myself as I walked back to the room. That smell of Listerine was starting to get more and more pungent, so much so that I thought I might pass out if I did not cover my mouth with my shirt.

"Bloody hell, is there a hazmat team in here? What is that?" I wondered aloud. I silently thanked every higher power I could think of when I managed to get to the hallway containing our room. However, as I walked for the door, it opened before me, and to my surprise, out walked the inspector, from earlier in the forest!

"I say, Inspector, what are you doing here?" I asked, my voice muffled by my impromptu gas mask. He did not seem in a particularly talkative mood, though, as he immediately ran off, apparently clutching some small object to his chest. I immediately knew that something was afoot, and ran as quickly as I could to the room. At first, I was thankful because it seemed the room was not as violently ransacked as I had expected, but it was still obvious that somebody had rifled through it.

"Well, this is fantastic," I muttered, looking through the small mess, trying to determine what he could possibly have taken. It appeared to me that nothing was missing, but then I came to a horrific realization that I was not looking in the correct place.

"Oh, no…surely not…" I opened the drawer in the bedside table, and lo, it was completely empty of the invaluable contents I had entrusted it with: the translators.

"Damn that inspector!" I cried. "I thought something was off about him!"

Forgoing all ideas of leaving Ralph and Anne to themselves, and ignoring the hideous smell, I ran back to the dining room, noticing that the camera crew was filming Clive shouting at who I assumed was the (evidently very stubborn) manager, a short, heavyset balding man, who was insisting his hotel had no flaws, which I now recognized as an absolute lie.

Ignoring them, I made my way over to Anne and Ralph, both of whom had, at the moment, no food at all.

"We've been robbed!" I whispered, trying to keep my voice under the microphones.

"What?" Anne whispered back, shocked.

"Do you remember that inspector from back at the Team Rocket base? I believe that after I informed him of the existence of my translators, he became very interested and followed us back here, then stole them from our room!"

"I thought he was strange," Ralph muttered.

"We must find him, or else my most important work will be lost fore—"

"CUT!" Clive yelled suddenly, signaling to the cameramen to stop rolling at once. "What is that goddamn smell? Seriously, we'll have to do this later, this is terrible. And speaking of terrible, that was not very good, way too over the top," he chided, turning to the manager.

"I always figured these things were faked," Anne said.

"Wait…shit! I recognize that smell!" Ralph yelled. "We need to get out of here, now!"

"What is it?" Clive yelled.

"I remember this from during the war! It's a highly flammable compound called Charmax! The slightest spark could set it off!"

"Could we please all calm down before I go deaf?" I requested.

"We need to get out of here as fast as possible before this place goes up!" Ralph demanded, running off to warn the other guests that may or may not have actually been there.

"Wait, was he talking about that Listerine smell?" The manager asked. "That's just the broken water cooler. Must be acting up again."

"I thought it was musty in here…" Anne mused.

"You seem remarkably…calm, now that the cameras are off," I said, silently thankful there was no apparent threat of explosion.

"Of course!" He said, somewhat surprised. "These things are all faked. I knew the hotel was going to shit, so I brought him down to help me fix it, and if I act like an insane asshole, then that draws people in because they want to see that crazy guy who was on TV last night, and I get money."

"Meanwhile, I look good when I manage to turn him and his hotel completely around, so we both get something out of it!" Clive said.

Before I could point out the severe issues inherent in such a model, Ralph ran back into the room, looking only very slightly out of breath.

"Okay, I don't think there's actually anybody here right now, but we need to get our things and leave as quickly as possible. If it hasn't gone off by now, we might still have a little bit of time to escape and…"

He was interrupted by a very loud boom, seemingly coming from the roof. Ralph shrieked and dove beneath a table, while the manager stared in disbelief.

"Uh…that was the water cooler, bucko. I think it finally died. 'Bout time, too."

"What?" Ralph asked, barely peeking his head out.

"That smell comes from the water cooler when it stops working. I don't know what that 'Charmax' stuff is, but whatever it is, I don't think it comes out of that old piece of junk, considering this place is still standing."

"Can we please get back on topic?" I requested. When all eyes were on me, and Ralph clambered out of his makeshift cover, I continued.

"A detective inspector robbed me of a very important invention of mine, and I desire to have it returned to me."

"A robbery!" Clive shouted, quite excited at the prospect. "This is great! Think of the ratings!"

"What?!" I cried. "No! My rightful property has been taken from me, and I intend to retrieve it without taking part in this cynical ratings game of yours!"

"Aw, please?" Anne begged. "I've always wanted to be on a Clive Warren show!"

"Well…make a statement about the hotel during the deconstruction bit or something, then! Ralph, do you at all care about this business?"

"I hate reality television," he said.

"Well, then, would you care to help me retrieve what is mine?"

"Hm…something might be up with that inspector. We should probably go looking for him."

We continued our conversation as we walked out of the dining hall. "Do you think he might be corrupt?" I asked.

"It's possible, but I don't think that's it." Ralph shook his head. "More likely is that he saw an opportunity for easy money and took it."

"Well, after he sells the prototypes, then what? He could not possibly determine how they work, they are extremely complicated, state of the art technology. The tone recognition coding alone is revolutionary."

"He doesn't care about the tech, he just wants whatever money he can get off of it."

"Bloody philistine," I muttered. We had just left the hotel, and I looked around, wondering where he might have gone.

"Blast! I think he may have escaped!" I cried.

"Hold on, Larch, it's not too late, he's probably still nearby. Hey, sir!" He ran off, and I saw that he was running towards a teenaged fellow waving about a sign for some cheap tax service.

"Did you see a tall, thin white guy clutching something to his chest run by here recently?" Ralph asked.

"Uh…yeah, actually, he looked like he was in a hurry. Why?"

"He's a friend of ours. Listen, which way did he go?"

"That way." He gestured to the east, which did not seem to have much there, thankfully narrowing our search.

"Alright, where might he have gone east?" I wondered.

"There's a motel over that way," the youth offered. "He might be in there."

"Thank you." Ralph and I ran off, hoping we were not too late.

()()()

The motel, though small, seemed infinitely superior to the horrific hovel we had just left behind, and it seemed a likely choice to settle down after a daring robbery.

"Alright, shall we take this bastard down?" I asked.

"We'll most likely have the element of surprise," Ralph said. "I think we should go in and extract him as soon as possible."

"Uh…yes. Anyway, if we go in and ask for him, it should be easy to find him."

We nodded, and made our entrance, Ralph walking up to the apathetic teenage girl at the front desk and putting on his best smile.

"Hi, a friend of ours just came by here, about yea high, black trenchcoat, kinda shifty looking?"

She blew out a bubble of gum and paused until it blew apart, then decided to answer him. "He's in room 203, over there." She pointed down a hallway, and Ralph thanked her, the both of us immediately running over there.

"'Allo?" Ralph asked, putting on a convincing impression of a Swedish housemaid. "Ve are de rume service, could ya opun op, pleaze?"

"What?" He asked from inside, opening the door. When he saw us, a look of shock crossed his face, but he quickly formed a plan of action to escape from us: punching me in the face and running away while I was distracted.

"Gah!" I cried, holding my bruised eye. " I looked with my uninjured eye and saw that Ralph had already given chase, and I did the same, trying not to bump into everything along the way.

()()()

By the time I got outside, Ralph and the inspector had already gotten into a fistfight, the two of them grappling with impressive skill.

"Get him, Ralph! Show him who the boss is!" I yelled, propping myself up against a porch pillar.

"Give the translators back, asshole!" Ralph yelled, evidently ignoring me.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" He insisted, clearly lying. Soon, Ralph managed to get an edge over him and force him on a table, trying to get a decent punch in. However, the inspector was not ready to give up that easily, and moved his head away from each punch. Eventually, the inspector managed to push Ralph off, and leapt back up into an uppercut, which forced Ralph to the floor.

"Come on, Ralph!" I attempted to encourage him, but it was little use, as now the earlier situation had been reversed, with the inspector throwing punches and Ralph dodging them.

"Oh, bollocks to this," I muttered, picking up a chair and smashing it over the inspector's back.

"Thanks," Ralph said, getting up and dusting himself off. "Is he okay?"

The inspector moaned, which was good enough for us.

"Now, where does he have those…" I started rifling through his overcoat, eventually pulling out the six devices he had so callously stolen from me.

"Should we call the cops?" Ralph asked.

"Is he worth the trouble?" I responded.

"Hang on…" Ralph pulled out the Inspector's wallet, and started looking through it, quickly spotting something of great interest.

"This inspector ID is a fake. Look, you can tell by the image of the crest. It's all smudged when it should be a lot clearer."

"Impersonating an officer of the law!" I cried. "Astonishing! What have we uncovered?"

"I was working for Rocket," he muttered beneath us. "I wanted to see who it was that found the base, and when you mentioned those translators, I thought it would be pertinent to our interests."

"Well, doubtlessly the police will find _you_ very pertinent to their interests. Ralph, do you have a handle on this situation?"

"Yeah, I don't think he'll be moving much at all for a little while."

"Excellent! I shall go rendezvous with Anne and then search for a better hotel."

"This one's pretty nice," the false inspector said. "Smells a lot better. Has free Wi-Fi, too."

"Very well, then, I will move us into this fine edifice after I meet with Anne. Ta-ra!"

()()()

"Anne?" I asked, seeing her standing outside the hotel. I noticed that she had taken the liberty of removing all of our bags, so that was one thing out of the way.

"Oh, hey, Larch. Found him?"

"Indeed." I held up the translators to confirm this. "It turns out he was an impostor working for Team Rocket. Quite nasty business."

"Jeez, what a douche."

"However, it turns out the motel he was staying at was quite nice, so we will be able to move there soon."

"Yeah, I'd rather not interrupt Clive anymore than I already have. I'll have to miss the part where I get to say what was wrong with the hotel, though, which is a shame."

"I am very much certain he knows what is wrong already."

"Hey, Larch, what the hell are you doing here?"

His voice was as a nail upon a thousand chalkboards, and I knew whom the voice belonged to before I ever turned around: Jack LeBoure.

"Jack…" I muttered, trying to look away.

"Seriously, what the hell brings you to this place? And that hotel, Jesus, you should consider a cardboard box, it'd be an improvement!"

"Still attempting to sell yourself as some sort of stand-up comedian, I see."

Jack smirked. "Hey, at least I'm more successful than you ever were!"

"We shall soon see, Jack, we shall soon see."

"Yeah, sure, whatever, once I show off these legendaries, I'll be heading straight for the top!" He punctuated his sentence by pointing straight into the sky and walking off.

I grimaced powerfully, but then shook it off, picked up my and Ralph's things, and we both walked to the motel, well ready to get some rest…


	5. Strong Rivalries

A Reminiscence

Chapter Five

Strong Rivalries

()()()

After our strange little adventure with the inspector, we were thankfully able to get some rest in the motel, and the next morning, an acceptable breakfast of eggs and bacon. It was hardly the highest-quality establishment, but after the hotel previous, it was a vast improvement.

When we walked out of the motel together, it seemed as if not much would happen that day, and I thanked the heavens themselves for such. Alas, it was soon proven not to be, as none other than Jack LeBoure walked up next to us, entirely uninvited, and began running his mouth.

"Larch! Still around, I see. You're gonna want to get that ticket soon, or else you won't make it to Unova in time to embarrass yourself!"

"Tell me, LeBoure, do you ever tire of being the most insufferable clod to walk upon this Earth?" I asked.

He merely shrugged and grinned. "It can be hard work sometimes."

"What do you want, Jack?" I stopped suddenly, turning to face him.

"Well, actually, I was wondering something. You go on and on about that Shaymin of yours so often, I thought it might be interesting to put it up against an actual Legendary to see where it stands."

I silently seethed for a moment, and then considered his proposal. Although it would be nice to finally shut him up, I knew he was referring to that damned Latias, and that putting Shaymin against it would be far, far too risky. I then considered an alternate path that might prove even more embarrassing for him.

"I shall do you better, LeBoure. I offer that, instead of your Latias against my Shaymin, I shall pit Rembrandt against her."

Anne, Ralph, and Jack all stared at me like I had gone completely out of my head. "Are…are you serious?" Jack asked, not believing my proposal was in earnest. "You want…to put a Smeargle…against a Latias."

"Indeed I do, and I am quite serious! I believe I stand a fair chance!"

Jack turned away from me and shook his head a bit, then turned back. "This I gotta see."

"I shall meet you at the gym, then," I offered, smiling.

"Yeah, yeah, sure…"

As I walked off, somewhat confident my plan would work, the other three stayed behind, utterly confused at my proposal.

()()()

I always thought the Celadon Gym was an odd little construction; much of it functioned as a greenhouse, and a very well kept one at that. Although the leader, Erika, was known to excel at Plant-type Pokémon, and her defeat would net one the Rainbow Badge, I was not there to battle her, which was just as well, since she was out on business when I got there, replaced by one of her assistants. He was somewhat odd looking, wearing his khakis and his beekeeper's hat, but seemed nice enough, and quickly made his services known to me.

"Hello, I'm afraid that Erika is out for now, so I'll be the interim Gym Leader until she gets back. How can I help you?"

"I challenged a certain rival of mine to a Pokémon battle, and thought it best to have it in a safe, controlled environment rather than out among the public."

"That's probably smart. Our battling area is open right now, so you won't have to wait. Who's your opponent?"

"A very unpleasant person, to be sure. He should be arriving shortly."

As I said this, the door opened behind me, and the others walked in, Jack looking surprisingly concerned.

"Look, Berkeley, this is a really terrible idea. There's no possible way that thing could beat Latias."

Indeed, it seemed that even when Jack was concerned for something, he had to find some way to make himself superior to it.

"Are you afraid, Jack? Afraid you will lose, so you are now trying to stop the battle before it starts?"

Jack grimaced. "What? No! It's a Latias against a Smeargle, why would I ever be afraid of losing in that?"

Erika's assistant raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed at the implication of the statement. "He has a point, that sounds like a really bad idea. Are you sure that—"

"I am entirely sure I want to go through with this," I insisted. "Now, where is the battling area?"

"Right over here, sirs." The fellow guided us to a fairly wide, grassy area, encased by a massive glass dome, which would be absolutely perfect for a battle of this caliber.

"All right, this is going to be a one-on-one fight," the assistant explained. "You each get one Pokémon, which you've apparently already chosen. No fighting dirty, no potions, and no switching your Pokémon out. Ready…" we each pulled out the appropriate PokeBall, "set…" we held them out, "Go!"

In a flash, we released our Pokémon, Rembrandt standing before the glorious, oddly-shaped Legendary Pokémon, Latias.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what the hell is this?" the Smeargle demanded, looking quite shocked. "What's this thing? Does that douchebag own it?"

"I shall explain later, Rembrandt, for now, we must fight!" I yelped as the Latias surged forward, one wing glowing silver, a clear use of Steel Wing. In an excellent display of reflexes, Rembrandt leapt over the wing like an Olympic athlete, turning around and striking the Latias on the head before landing expertly. She turned around before running into me, evidently quite steamed.

"What the…" Jack bellowed. "How did he do that?!"

"Practice and co-ordination!" I proudly answered. "Now, Rembrandt, use Leech Seed!"

Rembrandt threw out three small seeds, which caught the Latias off-guard, allowing them to take root and consistently provide Rembrandt with her own strength.

Although I could not read Jack's mind, in that moment, I did not have to, as the fear on his face from my early lead was quite evident.

"Uh…uh…Confusion!"

"Damn it!" I cried, pressing my hands to my temples to prevent myself from being affected. Rembrandt, unfortunately, reacted to late, and although he was not hit with the full brunt of the psychic onslaught, he was still rendered quite woozy.

I groaned. My advantage had been wrenched from me in a heartbeat, but the effect of the seeds kicked in at that moment and he regained some semblance of coherency.

"Oh…wow, that's awesome…" he mumbled, trying to regain himself.

"Focus, Rembrandt!" I shouted. "Get onto her back!"

He shook his head a few times and attempted to follow the command, but the Latias was impressively skilled, and consistently managed to dodge Rembrandt's attempts to get on her.

"Use Steel Wing again!" Jack shouted. The stakes were raised much higher as the wing transformed once more, meaning that if Rembrandt were to be struck, he would most likely be knocked out immediately, or even worse.

"Forget the back!" I commanded. "Dodge until she gets tired!"

Such a thing quickly proved to be very difficult indeed, as Rembrandt was barely able to dodge the vicious onslaught that the Latias was dishing out.

"Uh…hey, you might wanna calm down a little bit there, guys, this is starting to get out of hand!" the assistant warned. It went entirely unheeded, and I could not help but gape in horror as Rembrandt was struck by the steel wing.

"NO!" I cried, as he flew off to the side, landing in some shrubbery. For a few tense moments, nothing happened, and I halted my breath, hoping the worst had not come to pass. I felt like cheering madly when Rembrandt leapt back out, looking somewhat worse for the wear, but more importantly, very, very mad.

"Alright, now you're gonna get it!" he cried, running headlong at the shocked Latias, leaping up at the last second and delivering a solid kick beneath her chin. This proved enough for him to get onto her neck, allowing him to grab the "ears" and start riding her like a bull, cheering wildly. Although he certainly seemed to be enjoying himself, the rest of us simply stared in confusion at the strange sight before us.

"Okay, this is ridiculous." the assistant finally decided, pulling out a whistle and blowing on it. Both Pokémon on the field halted and stared at him as he called for a time-out.

"Are you all right, Rembrandt?" I asked, as he returned to me and Jack recalled his Latias.

"Ah…damn, that nearly blew my sternum in."

"My apologies for this whole business…I may have overestimated our abilities…"

Rembrandt shook his head. "Forget about it. I've got a score to settle, and goddamn it, I'm gonna settle it!"

He turned back to face Jack, who now looked quite mad.

"I'm not gonna let you win with that stupid beagle thing!" he shouted, releasing the Latias again.

"Okay, play nice this time," the assistant said. "And…begin!"

At first, neither of us announced a move, now realizing that whatever it was, it would probably be countered almost immediately. Neither did our Pokémon move, either, recognizing the same truth.

"Come on, come on…" Rembrandt muttered, circling the arena slowly, ready to attack at a moment's notice. The Latias was doing the same, a look of extreme concentration upon her face.

Then, in a movement so sudden it was almost impossible to tell what had happened, they launched at each other, both of them attempting a number of strikes in an effort to find an opening. However, as soon as this deadly dance began, it ended, both of them in the same position as before, waiting for another strike.

"Where did you learn to do that?" I asked breathlessly, quite impressed by what had happened before me.

"I get a lot of practice in that PokeBall." he answered, his focus not wavering for a second. The Latias lunged again, but Rembrandt realized it as a ruse, and leapt away before the Latias used Confusion again, safely escaping its range.

"They've just taken complete control over the match!" the assistant said. "You two aren't even doing anything!"

"Well, what would you do in this situation?" I demanded. "This has gotten entirely beyond my control! I am powerless now!"

Indeed, it seemed anybody was powerless to stop the battle now taking place before us. Once more, they lunged for each other, the Latias going just a bit too low, which allowed Rembrandt to leap over her and grab a wing, biting hard into it. She shrieked and attempted to shake him off, but the hold of his jaw was simply too powerful. Increasingly desperate, the Latias flew through the glass ceiling, but Rembrandt released his grip and fell back to the ground.

"Oh, what the hell?! Do you have any idea how expensive that glass is?" The assistant's concern was quickly drowned out as the Latias flew back in, glowing powerfully. She then appeared to punch into the ground, sending out a wave of raw psychic energy so powerful that we were all immediately knocked out. The last thing I saw before going under completely was the Latias grabbing Rembrandt's unconscious form and then flying out of the large hole she had made…

()()()

When I awoke, it was obviously later in the day, though it was still quite bright out, so I could not have been under for long. I slowly got to my feet, being quite careful as I was still fuzzy in the head.

"Wha…hello? Anybody?" I called out, hoping I would get a response. I quickly got one from Jack, who seemed quite displeased.

"What the hell was that!?" He demanded, rubbing his temples. "Where'd they go?"

"How should I know that?" I countered. "I was unconscious just as much as you were."

"If I lost that Latias, I am going to sue you out of everything that you own!"

"Relax, would you? I am sure they can still be found." Next to me, the assistant stirred, looking around at the mess.

"Damn it, she leaves for one day, and look at what happens…" he muttered, rubbing his head. "Wait, where the hell did they go?!" he yelled, running over to the arena and wildly looking about.

"That's what I was wondering," Jack said. "Evidently, Mr. Supergenius over here just let this escalate after his stupid Smeargle—"

"Stop trying to pin this on me, would you! It was your Latias that made us all unconscious, Rembrandt was entirely innocent in that."

"He bit her on the wing and rode her like a bull! I wouldn't call that 'innocent', Larch!"

"Only after she threw him into the greenery!"

"Well, maybe if you didn't instigate this stupid-ass battle in the first place, we wouldn't be having this problem!"

"Maybe if you stopped being an intolerable idiot for five seconds, I would never have challenged you in the first place!"

"Ladies, please, can you discuss this later?" the assistant asked. "Right now, we should try to find them."

"Find who?" Anne asked, walking up behind me.

"Rembrandt and the Latias have disappeared entirely." I said.

"What?! Can't anybody hold on to their Pokémon these days? Jeez…"

"That is irrelevant right now. We must find them!"

"What's this 'we' crap, now?" Anne demanded. "This was your screw-up, you figure it out. Besides, I have a really bad headache. Jesus, goddamn Psychic-types…"

Quite complete with the business, she walked off continuing to mutter some unintelligible anger.

"Blast. That Mightyena of hers would have been incredibly useful."

"A Mightyena?" Jack asked. "Seriously? Doesn't anybody use actually useful Pokémon these days?"

I glared at him. "I'll have you know, he has served quite a good purpose on our journey so far. Why, Rembrandt may have been lost even earlier without his timely help!"

"Oh, yeah, we probably should go looking for him."

"Where is Ralph?" I asked, looking around for him. I quickly spotted him, still sprawled on the ground, not conscious, but obviously still alive.

"Damn it, everybody useful is unavailable." I noted.

"Hey!" Jack objected. "I'm useful."

"Oh, certainly, I have no doubt in my mind that you will be of great use here. Why, the police should hire you for their manhunts, you would be utterly invaluable in such an event—"

"Will you two quit it?!" the assistant demanded. "You're acting like children! Just go get your stupid Pokémon and leave so I can fix this mess."

Jack and I looked at each other, and decided it would be wisest to follow his instruction. We collected our things and quickly made our leave, finding ourselves back out on the street.

"Well, now what?" Jack asked.

"We should begin by asking around. Perhaps somebody has seen them?"

"Yeah, that grandpa over there looks like he's been here a while." The man he was referring to was an older gentleman, sitting on a bench and reading a novella. Given that he was almost to the end of the book, it did indeed seem that he had been there for some time.

"Alright, sir, did you recently see a Latias flying out of that gym over there?" I asked him. He set down his book, not bothering to take his place, and looked up at me.

"Why, yes I did, sonny. Quite the powerbomb she did on that Smeargle, too." He laughed, despite my obvious concern.

"Powerbomb? Bloody hell…where did they go?"

"Well, after the powerbomb, they started jumping around each other, attracted quite the crowd. Eventually, they gave up and walked off. Seemed quite nice with each other."

"Oh?" I asked, genuinely surprised.

"Berkeley, I swear, if that dumb artist thing of yours gets my Latias—"

"Why is that the first thing that crosses your mind?" I asked.

"Well, uh…okay, yeah, wow, that sounded really bad…"

"You two wanna get a room already?" the man asked us. Jack and I glanced at each other, then quickly looked away, quite uncomfortable with this line of conversation.

"Uh…yes, anyway, where did they go?" I asked, desperate to change the subject.

"Somewhere in the forest, over yonder. Real good catch, that Latias was, by the way."

"…Thank you?" Jack clearly had little idea what to think at this point, and instead ran over into the forest, eager to be rid of the whole mess. I followed suit, having the same desire, and turned up the volume on the translator to ensure I caught any ambient conversation.

"Hey, Latias, where the hell are you?" Jack yelled, clearly not interested in the same degree of precision as I. "Latias, come on, I want to get out of this asshole of a city!"

"Have you any subtlety at all?" I asked, pushing past him. "Rembrandt?" I asked simply. I waited a moment for the response, but found none.

"Where have they gone?" I wondered. "How far into the forest could they have gone?"

"Apparently, pretty far in," Jack said, looking around for any sign. "Damn it, they really went in here."

"Perhaps they are not in the forest at all. They may very well have left some time ago."

Jack halted, considering this possibility. After a while, he simply said "Shit," and turned around. I followed, hoping I was right.

()()()

"Okay, that didn't work," Jack said, walking back to the old man. "Did you see them go anywhere else after they went into the forest?"

"Why, yes, actually, I forgot to mention. They came back out after a few minutes holding some berries and went right over there." He turned around on his seat and pointed behind him, and lo, there were Rembrandt and the Latias, chatting away in front of a sizable crowd of people.

"…We are quite stupid, aren't we?" I asked Jack.

"...Goddamnit," Jack muttered, running over.

"Say, would you like my translator?" I offered, following after him. He turned to face me, staring at me.

"Fine," he said. I took them out of my ear and handed them to him. He quickly placed him into his ears and walked over to his Latias. Getting closer, he stopped, evidently hearing Pokémon talk in English for the first time. Stopping for a few more moments, he finally said "Holy shit!" and pulled out his Pokeball, pushing away the crowd and recalling the Latias at last. The crowd dispersed, making noticeable sounds of great disappointment, and Rembrandt glared at him.

"Hey, come on, I've been out for, like, an hour. I need to get out of here."

I could not tell what Rembrandt then said, but given that Jack then yelled, "Well, fuck you too!" I can guess it was that he stated.

Jack walked back to me, visibly displeased, and handed back the translators. "I guess they do work. That Latias is still gonna steal the show, though."

"I am sure she will. A fine specimen, and a fine…well, attempt at a battle, I suppose."

He shrugged. "I guess it was alright before it went to shit. Thank you."

Jack held out his hand, and I decided to shake it as a show of good faith. We nodded at each other, and then he walked off, leaving me alone outside of the gym.

"Did you find him?" Anne asked, walking up next to me.

"Uh…yes, right over there." I went over to retrieve Rembrandt, now thinking about what would happen when we finally got to Unova. I had no doubt that, no matter what, it would certainly be interesting…


	6. A Sort of Hero

A Reminiscence

Chapter Six

A Sort of Hero

()()()

A few minutes after Jack and I had recovered our Pokémon, Anne, Ralph, and I had regrouped near the town center, finally ready to get to Vermillion City, and thus, the S.S. Anne.

"All right, we have had our fun, but we really should be going soon," I said, knowing it would be best. "The S.S. Anne leaves in a few days, after all."

"I agree," Ralph said, crossing his arms. "I'm very much over this place."

"We should be able to make it to Saffron City before nightfall," Anne said.

"What if we got a taxi?" Ralph proposed.

"The fare would be enormous by the time we got there," I noted. "It would likely be better to simply walk."

"All the way to Saffron?" Anne asked. "No, thank you."

"Well, perhaps there may be some alternative method of transportation," I said. "In fact, is there not a carriage that goes to Saffron at about this time?"

"Hey, yeah!" Ralph had suddenly recalled that which I was referring to: a lovely Ponyta-drawn carriage that conveyed passengers upon Route Seven, allowing for simple access. Better still, it would be more efficient than taxi fare: the cost was up front, rather than progressively greater as it went along, and I was well aware taxi drivers took the longer routes on purpose to drive up costs.

"Excellent!" I pronounced. "We shall take the carriage at once!"

"Oh, yeah, the carriage!" Anne remembered, somewhat late in. "I've always wanted to go on that."

"Well, now you shall get your chance," I said. "It would be wise to head over now; it will likely depart soon."

With that, we three headed for Route Seven, expecting the carriage to be upon it. Indeed, when we got there, the carriage was still there, but we quickly noticed a problem: it was, in fact, preparing to leave, and we likely would not make it in time…at least, we would not if we had not realized the issue and started running very quickly.

"Hold on!" I cried, desperately trying to keep up. Luckily for me, these tour carriages never moved very quickly. "Hold on, I say!"

"What the hell?" somebody in the back of the carriage said, looking back at us.

"I said slow down!" I shouted once more. The carriage did nothing, again, and I thus had to take more drastic measures. Running up directly alongside the carriage, I grabbed hold of it, trying to keep my legs moving along with it. I quickly grew tired of trying to keep up, though, and let my legs simply drag behind me.

"Holy hell!" The driver said, grinding the carriage to a halt. He dismounted and ran up to me, looking both worried and confused. "Are you alright?"

"Er, yes, entirely," I let go of the carriage and adjusted my glasses. "Might we get on? I have fare."

"Uh…" The driver was clearly quite unsure of whether or not to let us on, and looked back at the passengers.

"Hell, that was pretty entertaining, I say let 'em on!" somebody proclaimed.

The driver shrugged. "Well, if you say so…"

"Ah, very good!" I said. "How much will that be, then?"

()()()

After our little hiccup, we found ourselves just outside of Saffron City, the largest city in the region. The skyline was truly impressive, dominated by the massive Silph Co. building, from which the entire world was provided with items invaluable for Pokémon training, including the PokeBall, one of the greatest achievements of our age. I felt, though, that it would soon relieve that title in favor of my translator. However, that was still a way off, and we had to get to Vermillion quickly, so we had little time to enjoy the sights.

"Damn," Ralph said, looking at the buildings. "Pretty impressive."

"Indeed it is. However, we must not dally much longer. I believe that by the time we get to the edge of the city, Bill will have recovered and he can carry us into Vermillion, at which point we only have to get to the S.S. Anne and thus, Unova."

"Thanks for the recap, professor," Anne deadpanned. "We still have to get to the edge."

"We seriously could take a taxi, it would save some time." Ralph suggested.

"I do not trust taxi drivers!" I announced. "The last time I took a taxi in this city, he drove halfway around the edge of the city for absolutely no reason!"

"Well, you'd want to see the sights, right?" Anne asked.

"Not when they add twenty dollars to my fare!" I countered.

"Fine, cheapskate, we'll just walk across the entire goddamn city."

"Calm down, both of you," Ralph chided. "The easiest way to get there would be going straight down Main Street, and then turn right just past the Silph Building."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's not terrible," Anne said.

We began the walk towards the building, getting quickly caught up in the hustle and bustle of the city. We were able to get a fairly good pace, if only for the sake of not getting trampled.

"Bloody hell, where are all these people going?" I wondered aloud. It went unheard, though, among the countless other conversations going on around us.

I was starting to get claustrophobic among all the people around us, so I silently thanked the higher powers once we managed to reach the Silph Co. building. We stopped for a moment to stare up at it, awing at the sheer size of the eighty-story skyscraper.

"This is still quite the feat of architecture," I said. "Thousands of tons of steel and glass that perfectly supports itself. Absolute genius."

"Yeah," Anne said, "I guess. None of the walls are load-bearing, though. All that glass is just there to keep out weather and stuff. The actual support is all just concrete and rebar in the foundation, so it doesn't really 'support itself'." As if to mock me, she did those "air quotes" that are so popular nowadays, but I ignored that.

We stayed for a few moments more, but then was when things got strange. A loud "bang" rang out and thick white smoke began pouring out the front of the building, and the quickly moving crowd halted in shock, wondering aloud at what had just happened. It became obvious very soon that it was just some sort of smoke bomb, although for what, nobody could have known.

"I'm going in," Ralph said after a few minutes, pulling his handgun back out.

"In there?!" I asked. "Are you insane? You are likely to be shot! How can you even see anything?"

"It has to clear out soon, and whoever's in there, I doubt they can see very well either." He then ran in, keeping a very low profile and expertly keeping his gun at the ready.

For a few tense moments, we waited to see what would occur. It soon became obvious that Ralphs brilliant plan was not very good, as he sprinted out of the smoke quite unprofessionally, his gun missing entirely and a bruise below his eye.

"What happened?" Anne asked, gingerly touching his bruise.

"I…may have underestimated my advantage," He answered, huffing.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means there were twenty of them with high-grade assault rifles and military equipment, and I was blind and had a handgun with half a magazine left."

"That is a significant disadvantage, yes," I noted.

Suddenly, a sleek black limousine drove out of the halted traffic, and stopped right in front of the building.

"What is this business, now?" I wondered, and was soon answered when four spec-ops looking types wielding very large assault rifles came out and took their place. From behind, a man in a rather ugly beige suit walked out and ran into the building, quickly obscured by the smoke. They immediately demanded the crowd to clear out, pointing the guns at them. Although everyone around us caught on and made their exit, we simply sort of stared.

"Hey, you!" one of them yelled, pointing at us. "Get out of here!"

"Uh…now, look, we can talk about this, surely…" My words went unheeded as Anne released Bill, who looked around a bit and then roared powerfully. The four men held up their guns, but before they could fire, Bill shot out a volley of his own fire. Two of them dodged out of the way, since they were well out of the fire's range, but two others were immediately set alight, as was the limousine behind them. While they fell to the ground and started rolling about in a desperate attempt to put out the flames, the other two began shooting wildly at Bill, who merely flew above the bullets and swooped back down, grabbing one of them in his claw and throwing him at the other man, incapacitating them both.

"Holy shit!" Anne yelled, all three of us running over to the scene. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Bill said, stretching his neck slightly. "I think they clipped my wing, though."

Anne looked at the membrane, and saw that, indeed, several bullets had punctured it. She grimaced and began looking at the surprisingly small wounds, Bill looking quite confused as she did so.

"What's wrong? I've scuffed it up way worse than that."

Anne looked up at him in doubt. "You got shot with an assault rifle, but your wing barely looks damaged. How did that happen?"

It was then I realized an explanation would be pertinent, and so I began. "A Charizard's wing membranes are such that rather than normal flesh, in which damage can spred outwards from a single point, only the point of impact is damaged and removed, so that the rest of the wing remains intact for flying. Quite ingenious, really."

"Thanks for the science lesson," Anne said, rolling her eyes. "What are we going to do about this?"

"What do you mean, 'this'? Do you expect us to save the day again? We may have gotten lucky the first time, but this is completely beyond the pale. We have no chance against them!"

"Look, Larch, I've had training, I can handle this situation. Especially with one of these." He picked up one of the unconscious men's rifles, along with some ammunition.

"Will that be enough?" I asked.

"If you help me, yes," he answered.

"Absolutely out of the question," I balked. "Do you really expect me to go in there and risk being turned into Swiss cheese by those psychopaths?"

"If you won't, I will." With that, Ralph ran inside the building, where the smoke had about cleared out. I thought for a moment and realized that I could not allow him to do this alone, and that he would most likely die if he did so.

"Damn it," I muttered, picking up the other rifle and running in after him.

I found Ralph waiting outside the elevator, his gun at the ready.

"Oh, you came," He greeted, turning around and pointing the gun at me. I ducked away, not wanting him to accidentally aerate me with the thing.

"Careful with that!" I yelled, getting back up. "Some training you had. Even I know you are supposed to keep you finger off the trigger and not point it at anybody!"

"Hm?" He questioned. I decided to drop it, which was probably a good thing, as that was the moment that Anne came up.

"So, what do we do?"

"You did not grab a weapon?" I asked.

"I have Bill."

"That may not be enough. He got lucky earlier, but in such a group and in such a tight space, they are likely to do more damage."

"I figured as much. Which is why I grabbed this." She held up a black cylinder will a tab of sorts at the very top. Despite not being very well versed in weaponry, I immediately recognized it.

"A smoke grenade? This is likely the same thing that they used earlier to cover their entrance."

"And we'll use it to cover ours," Ralph said, when suddenly the elevator dinged behind him. We all turned to face it, Ralph holding up his weapon, Anne readying the grenade, and me attempting to at least look threatening, if nothing else.

After a few tense moments, it opened, revealing but one of the men, who looked very surprised to see us there. Before he could react, Ralph moved his gun downwards and shot a few times at his feet, distracting him enough that he was then able to run over and clock him with the butt of the gun, sending him to the floor like a lead weight.

"Bloody hell!" I yelled, picking at my ear. "Are these things usually that loud?"

"Yes," Ralph answered, searching the man for more ammo.

"I had better take these out, then," I decided, pulling out my translators. "The noise might damage them." The others decided this was wise, and pulled out theirs.

"Well, now what?" I asked. As if to answer, the unconscious man roused, rubbing his head in agony.

"What the hell?" he muttered, catching eye of us once again. Ralph grabbed him by the collar and, in an impressive display for such a wiry man, lifted him off the ground.

"Where is the man that came in here?" he demanded coldly, sending a chill through all present.

"T-the top floor," he stuttered in answer. Ralph, having gotten the information he needed, thrust his head against the wall of the elevator, knocking him out once again.

"You are going to give him brain damage at this rate, you know," I said, getting into the elevator along with Anne.

"He probably wasn't using it for much, anyway," Ralph said, throwing him unceremoniously out of the elevator. It was likely true, but there was no time to dwell on it.

I observed the panel of buttons that would convey the elevator to the upper floors. "It seems this elevator does not actually go to the very top, only halfway. Rather common in modern buildings, really. We shall have to take the one next to it on the middle floor the rest of the way."

"They'll be waiting for us," Ralph said. "When we reach the top floor, get ready to raise hell."

"Hell, you say?" Anne asked, pulling out one of her PokeBalls. "I guess Dante would be appropriate, then?"

I glared at her for the terrible pun, but rather than call attention to it, I merely pressed the button to take us to floor forty, knowing that Anne was most likely right anyway.

As we approached our destination, we discussed the plan of action for the inevitable blockade of people. It was a relatively simple one, but we believed it would work quite well, and once we reached floor forty and the door opened, it was time to put it into action.

The fortieth floor appeared to be a sort of secondary reception area, with the actual receptionists huddled under a table. The reason for this was obvious, as at least five of those men were waiting there for any intruders, but before they could shoot us, Anne tossed out both her smoke grenade and Dante. Two of the men had foolishly removed their masks, allowing the smoke to blind them and make them easy targets for Dante. At the same time, Ralph leapt out, eyes closed and firing his gun, having already memorized the position of the other soldiers. I, at the same time, would attempt to provide covering fire so as to protect us, but I soon gave up as the recoil ended up with me firing at the ceiling.

Once the smoke cleared, we saw how well our plan had worked: Dante was standing over the two men, having easily put them out of commission, and the rest of them were lying wounded on the floor. However, while Ralph's aim was true, I found that, in my confusion amidst all the chaos and smoke, I was actually firing at the wall, and had done quite a good job of unintentionally sanctifying it.

"Good job, Larch," Ralph said, smugly patting me on the back.

"Shut up, you had the advantage!" I yelled. "You actually know how to use these!"

"What happened?" One of the receptionists asked, coming out from the table entirely unscathed. She took one look at the room, and said one simple thing: "Holy shit!"

"My apologies for all this violence, but sometimes you have to do this sort of thing to liberate the innocent."

"Now is hardly the time to be waxing philosophical on war, Ralph. We must free the building posthaste!"

"Getting excited?" Ralph asked.

"Ah…yes, I was, somewhat…anyway, we should get to the top floor. Anne, do you require armaments?"

I soon saw she had already taken that initiative, holding a number of smoke grenades and putting them in her bag.

"These things are fantastic!" she said, picking up a fair number more of them.

"What could you possibly use all of those for?" I asked. Anne promptly dropped her prizes to the ground, and Ralph and I flinched away, expecting a horrible explosion of blinding smoke. However, such did not occur, and we quickly made our way to the next elevator.

"Same plan?" Anne asked as we went up.

"Not this time. We'll need to do something else, since they'll be expecting us now," Ralph said. "Now, what I was thinking is that we'll…"

He was thoroughly interrupted as the lights in the elevator cut out and it sped up significantly, taking us to the top floor much faster than it would have normally.

"What the hell is this?" Ralph yelled, grabbing on to the wall. It soon reached the destination, although we realized that we were meant to come up here, and whoever was responsible was very impatient regarding such.

When we reached the very top floor, we finally knew what was waiting for us: a massive office, twice as large as all the other floors, with an impressive window on each wall. In the center was the CEO of Silph Co. himself, Silias Silph, with a gun put to his head, held in the arms of a colossal blond man in a beige suit.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I demanded, trying to intimidate him with my weapon. It failed, however, as the man merely laughed.

"I was hoping to meet you three after you took out my base in the forest," he said, a smile upon his face. He released Silias, allowing him to quickly clamber under a desk. "I'm honestly impressed that you managed to do this, looking at you now. I'd normally think you would barely be able to take out Chinese food."

"Oh, hardy har har," I muttered. "Who are you?"

"I am Giovanni!" he yelled, throwing out his arms dramatically. "Leader of Team Rocket, and soon, the world!"

"All right, why did you go to all this trouble to take over the building?"

"Because, I wanted to meet the three people that might spell my undoing. I knew that you would be in Saffron by now, and that you couldn't resist saving the day again, so I simply faked a takeover to bring you up here. I wasn't quite expecting you to literally be right outside when we did it, but all the better, I suppose!"

"And now that we are here, what will you do?" I asked, stepping slightly behind Ralph, who glared fiercely at me for it.

"Well, that's easy," Giovanni said. "Kill you all!" Quite suddenly, and with obvious practice, he threw his arms downwards, releasing two submachine pistols from hidden catches in his sleeves, and started firing at us. However, it was very difficult to shoot both of them at once, and we were able to duck away from the streams of lead and get behind the table that Silias had chosen as a cover.

"Who the hell are you three?" he demanded, covering his head.

"Honestly, I am beginning to have that question myself!" I yelled, as Ralph leapt up from the table while Giovanni fumbled with his empty guns, trying and failing to reload them. The three of us still under the table looked up, and saw that Ralph had gotten into a fistfight with the colossal man, Giovanni's devastating punches easily being avoided by Ralph's light frame.

"Come on, you couldn't punch the broad side of a barn!" he goaded, easy weaving between the horrendously telegraphed strikes. He continued his taunts, each one enraging Giovanni further and making his attacks even more useless.

Eventually, Ralph managed to guide the fight over towards the massive window aforementioned, himself being closer to it as Giovanni continued throwing punches.

"What is he doing?" I wondered aloud. "If he gets hit, he will fall straight through!"

"I think that's the idea," Anne said.

As we continued watching, we realized what Ralph was planning: he had kicked Giovanni away at this point, and both had stopped to catch their breath.

"Is that it?" Ralph asked, laughing. "Are you just giving up?"

"Shut up!" Giovanni yelled, charging at him like an enraged Tauros. Before the vicious impact hit, Ralph ducked beneath him, using Giovanni's own inertia to throw him straight through the window, breaking a massive hole in it and sending him straight to the ground.

"Jesus Christ!" I yelled. We all ran over to the window in shock, carefully looking down to see that he had landed on his own limousine, nearly breaking it in half.

"You just killed a guy!" Anne yelled, gesturing towards the limo in shock.

"So?" Ralph smirked. "He was the most wanted criminal in the country. I just performed a public service."

"Uh…" Silias looked at all three of us. "Thank you for saving the building, I suppose. Is there any way for me to repay you?"

I thought for a moment. "Well, there are two things I can think of. One, we will need a way to get to Vermillion City very quickly, and two, I would quite like if you were to mass produce these," I pulled out my translators, "Pokémon-to-human translation devices."

"Translation devices?" he asked. "I thought those were impossible. Everybody said the engineering hurdles would be too great to overcome."

"They were quite difficult," I admitted. "Were it not for my persistence and some very lucky breakthroughs, I likely would say it was impossible this very day. I am going to be delivering a presentation on it during the Unova conference in about a week and a half."

"Oh, yeah, I was thinking about going there, actually. I guess now I have a pretty damn good reason." He chuckled for a moment, pulling out a keychain and yanking a particular key off. "There's a Vincentio Horizon in the underground garage, floor one, space number 3. You can have it, if you'd like."

"Surely you jest!" I yelled. "A Vincentio Horizon? That is among the finest and fastest cars in the world! There only exist a hundred and two!"

"And I own three of them. Trust me, I don't have a dearth of good cars. At least half the ones I own are custom made roadsters that are completely unique. I don't have a need for three copies of a car that doesn't really stand up to those at all. Besides, I think you deserve it for saving my company."

"I…thank you!" I said, grasping the keys in surprise.

"Now, hold on, I was the one who did the work here," Ralph said, pulling the keys from my grasp. I attempted to protest, but realized he was completely correct.

"Very well then," I said, dejected. "I shall see you at my presentation. I hope you will be impressed."

"I hope so too," Silias said. "Have a nice trip!"

We nodded in assent, and quickly made our way back to the elevator, hoping the car would live up to our expectations.

()()()

"Holy shit," Ralph muttered, looking at the sleek black beauty before us. It was truly a perfect machine. I recalled a few details about its function, but those were pushed out of my head as we climbed inside, Ralph driving, myself shotgun, and Anne in the back with her bag of grenades.

"I am fairly certain those are illegal to possess without a number of licenses," I noted, looking back at her. We had no chance to discuss this, however, as Ralph pulled out, rocketing to high speeds immediately and taking us directly outside the back of the building. He made an expert turn, taking us back around the front onto Main Street, where a number of police cars and a single ambulance were waiting, taking the soldiers into custody.

"Do you have the situation under control?" I asked, rolling my window down as Ralph stopped the car.

One of the cops looked up, evidently quite surprised. "Are you the ones that did all this?" he asked, gesturing towards the ruined limo and the corpse that was being removed.

"What happens if I say yes?" I asked, worried as to the answer.

"Well, I'd congratulate you for taking out the most dangerous criminal in Kanto, and then let you go because that guy is in Special Command." He pointed towards Ralph, who smirked.

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"You kidding?" The cop seemed incredulous, which surprised me. "You three are all over the news! You'll be national heroes in no time after this!"

I immediately ducked back inside and consulted with the other two for a moment. We decided that, while being considered great heroes was certainly nice, we had more pressing issues.

"We really must be going! We must catch the SS Anne, and there is not much time left before it departs!" I yelled.

"All right then!" the cop cheered. "Good luck on whatever else you do! I'm sure wherever you go will end up pretty goddamn safe!"

"With us around?" Anne chuckled. "I doubt that."

I doubted this as well, but chose not to voice my concerns as we drove off at impressive (but still perfectly legal) speed and comfort, and we would be in Vermillion City in no time. What would await us remained a mystery, and given what had happened to us in the past few days alone, it would be completely impossible to guess what else awaited us on our journey…


	7. Progress

A Reminiscence

Chapter Seven

Progress

()()()

With the power of the Horizon and over one thousand brake horsepower, reaching Vermillion City within the hour became absolutely trivial. Of course, considering that we were going at astonishing speeds over the poorly-paved (Route Whatever), which was, in short, very uncomfortable, even in the Horizon's expertly designed comfort.

"I say, slow down, you madman!" I yelled, trying to keep myself stable against the road's many bumps.

"This is the fastest production car in the world!" Ralph responded. "What the hell would I slow down for?"

"My safety?!"

"Hey, it's not like it matters much, here we are now." I looked ahead, and saw that we had indeed come to the tollbooth outside of the city. Ralph finally began decreasing his ludicrous speed, coming to a perfect stop right beside the booth.

"Hello?" he asked, rolling down his window and looking at the completely disinterested teenage girl sitting within.

"It's a dollar to get in," she said, crudely popping her gum. "And before you ask, we don't take checks or credit ca…is that a Vincentio Horizon?!" She quickly perked up, looking the car over very thoroughly indeed.

"Why, yes, it I,." Ralph answered, likely putting on a cheesy grin. "A dollar, you say?" He then, rather snidely, retrieved a twenty from his wallet and threw it in, driving off quickly, leaving a cloud of dust and a very confused girl in his wake.

As we finally ended up on paved road, I decided to ask a fairly important question.

"What in the hell did you just do back there?!"

"Come on, Larch, if I have the best supercar in the world, I've gotta act like it."

"By throwing twenty dollar bills into toll booths at random?"

"That's what rich people do, throw money around at everybody!"

"You are hardly as rich as Silias Silph," I noted.

Ralph blinked and looked away, pulling up outside of a diner.

"We should probably get something to eat," he said, getting out.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Perhaps you might try a five-star bistro for your foie gras, Mr. Moneybags!"

"Okay, okay, I get it already!" Ralph yelled, walking inside.

"Are you sure? Perhaps you could hire a team of analysts to…" My sentence was cut short when Anne slapped me on the back of the head, shooting me a very dirty look.

Saying nothing more, we both walked inside, where Ralph was already observing the (questionable) menu above the counter where the (questionable) food would be collected. A woman of about sixty was washing this counter, occasionally glancing up at us with a very unpleasant stare.

"Okay, what do we have here?" Anne wondered as she observed alongside him. I, however, looked past them and observed the area behind the bar, noticing a very peculiar set of stairs, leading down to some sort of basement.

"This breakfast menu is terrible," Anne muttered as I continued my observations, "who eats fried chicken for breakfast?"

"White people with no money?" Ralph answered.

Their attention was quickly drawn to that staircase as a door at its base slammed open, and a fellow dressed like some sort of seventeenth-century composer, with waistcoat, coat and breeches, all of them black with silver highlights.

"Silence, Mother!" he cried in a terribly fake British accent, turning back dramatically. "I shall find success, and this is where I shall find it!"

"You're a moron, Larry!" a woman, presumably his mother, cried back. "You'll get shot if you go out looking like that!"

"The world will forever fear my name! You will see! All will see!"

"Ooh, I'm so scared!" his mother answered back, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Please, anything but a dime-store composer outfit!"

"I made this myself and you know that! I'm very proud of it!" He crossed his arms, and quickly stormed out, throwing the door open hard enough to almost take it off its hinges.

"What the screaming hell was that?" Ralph asked, scratching his head.

"My grandson," the woman at the counter answered. "Ignore him."

"Rather difficult to, with that outfit," I noted.

"You'll just encourage him," she continued, "he's trying to be some sort of 'mega-villain' or something. He never made anything of himself and he's trying to prove he can, so he's trying to take over the world or something stupid."

"Oh, good," I muttered. "I already know how this is going to end."

"Hm?" Anne asked, looking away from the menu.

"Nothing, nothing," I said. "What shall we order?"

"I'm really not sure." Anne looked at the menu once more, as did I. Indeed, it seemed that no matter what we ordered, it would be either fill in our arteries, choke us with toxic fumes, or perhaps even poison us.

"Excellent choice of a diner," I said to Ralph, who looked quite frightened for once.

"How do they get away with selling this crap?" he asked. "Doesn't the health department know about this?"

"I might almost contact the Homeland Defense Department about this," I answered. Ralph stifled a chuckle, while Anne merely glared at me.

"Can we just go somewhere else?" she asked. "This place is going to kill us!"

Perfectly on cue, a fair sized rock shattered the front window and knocked her square on the head, sending her sprawling to the floor. Ralph immediately kneeled down to care for her, while I looked to see who it was, and saw that it was that strange fellow from earlier, Larry. He bit his thumb, presumably at the whole establishment, and then ran off, trying and failing miserably to be discrete.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Anne said, getting up with Ralph's assistance. "Who the hell was that?"

"Damn it, Larry!" The woman from behind the counter quickly made her exit, trying to chase after her incredibly strange grandson.

"Can something normal happen for once?!" I yelled. "I just wanted breakfast, and now some pretend villain dressed like evil Mozart is throwing rocks about! And not to mention how much of a step backwards this is! I mean, yesterday we re-enacted Die Hard with the richest man on the planet, for goodness' sake!"

I started breathing heavily, while Anne and Ralph stared at me.

"You okay?" Anne asked.

"Yes, that helped." I looked back outside and carefully observed the direction that Larry had run. "If we are some team of national heroes, I think it would be wise to at least look into this. That sort of obsession cannot ever end well."

"What's that nerd gonna do?" Anne asked. "He's some dork in a lame Halloween costume, there's nothing he's gonna do."

"I would not be so sure, Anne," I said. I looked outside, and started as he ran by the window yet again. Ralph ran out to grab him, but before he could, he took out what appeared to be a set of keys and vandalized the driver's side door of the Horizon.

"Damn it, my car!" Ralph yelled, ignoring as Larry ran off in favor of the mutilated door.

"Oh, dear, that is not good," I said, looking at the affected area. It appeared that he had quite finely, given his limited time, carved "LWVG" into the door. What it stood for must wait until later, but for now, it was a very ugly scar on a work of sublime beauty.

"Not good! Look at it! He's ruined it!"

"Relax, would you?" I demanded. "I believe Rembrandt can mend this affront, he is quite the talent. While he does so, we shall go looking for...him. Perhaps we shall find some relevance for this defacement."

Ralph looked at the scratches, unconvinced Rembrandt could mend it, but then conceded to me anyway.

"Rembrandt, your turn!" I cried, releasing him from his digital slumber. He rubbed his eyes for a moment, adjusting to it, and then gawked at the work of art before him.

"Holy shit!" he yelled, closely observing the subtleties of the car. "Is this a Vincentio Horizon? How the hell did you get this?"

"It was a gift from Silias Silph after we saved him from Team Rocket," I explained.

"You've been on top of things, huh?" Rembrandt continued his intense study, but came to a grinding halt as he saw the vandalism.

"What the hell is this?!" he yelled, pointing at it as if it had just killed hundreds. "Who did that?"

"Somebody very strange, and we are going to look for him and seek justice. Could you fix this?"

"I can't let this stay here!" he yelled. Ralph gawked as the paint on his tail changed from green to black, and he quickly started painting over the scratches.

"That's incredible."

"I told you he was a talent. Come along, now!" I ran off in pursuit, Anne and Ralph following me.

()()()

It was not terribly difficult to trace Larry's steps, given how noticeable he was; all we had to do was occasionally ask people if they had seen someone who had prepared for Halloween well in advance, and we were easily able to find him sitting on the rim of a lovely water fountain in a park on the edge of the city.

"So, you have managed to find me," he said, crossing his arms and smiling slightly.

"You wanna tell me why you scratched my car up?" Ralph asked, getting into a fighting stance.

"I wished to give you reason to chase after me. After all, I would be no villain without some rival, and who better than the three recent heroes of Kanto?"

"What are you playing at?" I demanded. "What are you trying to accomplish?"

"Going down in history, of course!" he answered, pointing at the sky. "I shall easily take rule of Kanto after I defeat you, and from there, I shall take control of the entire world!"

"Because that worked so well the last time someone tried it…" I muttered. Larry glared at me, and made an impressive leap right in front of me.

"The last man who tried it was a fool!" he cried. "I have no intention of failing as he did. No, I will succeed in all the parts where he did not."

"I'll see about that!" Ralph raised his fist, running at him with full intention to take him down. However, Larry simply leapt away, producing a PokeBall that soon revealed a massive Gliscor, which stopped Ralph right in his tracks.

"Now is not the time for our battle," Larry said, hiding behind his Pokémon. "You wish to go on the S.S. Anne, correct?"

"Yes…" I said, staring at the terrifying beast before us.

"Then we shall do battle there. I would suggest you hurry, by the way. Else there might be…consequences."

Before any of us could react, he leapt onto his Gliscor's back, and they flew off with impressive speed, leaving us behind on the ground.

"What did he mean by consequences?" Anne wondered.

"Nothing good," Ralph said. "We need to hurry."

We all nodded, and quickly ran back to the car to find an impressive sight: Rembrandt sitting atop the car, the scratches perfectly covered and many other improvements besides.

"Hi, guys! I added some flame decals onto it. I think it really adds to the dimensions."

Indeed, atop the bonnet, roof, and front wheels, he had painted large gouts of highly realistic blue flame.

"That's…impressive." Ralph looked the flames over, evidently pleased with their introduction. "You did all this while we were gone?"

"I could have done more, but you came back too soon."

"Say, Rembrandt, how would you like to ride in this?" I asked. Rembrandt practically exploded with joy at this proposition, and immediately burst into a tirade of confirmation.

"Very well, then. You shall come with us, we might well need your help."

Rembrandt paused, his brows furrowing. "What's this about help, now?"

"Do you want to ride in the car or not?"

Rembrandt crossed his arms. "Oh, fine."

"Excellent! Get in, we should make haste." Upon my suggestion, we entered the car, Ralph turning the key and bringing it to life.

"Hold on!" he yelled, pulling out and pressing upon the gas pedal. We reached the legal speed limit almost instantly, and he carried on as such until we reached the pier where the S.S. Anne was waiting. Immediately, we knew something was up: Larry's Gliscor was keeping a crowd of people at bay, leaving him in the center of a makeshift circle. Clearly, he wanted a fight of some sort, and would not rest until he received one.

Ralph hit the handbrake and turned into a perfectly clean stop, stepping out just as the car halted.

"All right, you, let's do this!" Ralph yelled, pushing through the crowd.

"Bring your friends in and we shall," Larry answered.

"…Sure." Ralph gestured to us three, and we exited, standing together before him.

"Excellent!" Larry cried. "I can finally face my greatest foes, and now they and the world shall forever know my name! All shall quake in fear before Lord Wolfgang Von Genocide!"

"Lame!" Anne yelled, cupping her hands to her mouth to emphasize.

Larry, or rather, Wolfgang, stumbled, balking at her mockery.

"You dare mock me?!" he yelled. "You will pay for your impudence! Gliscor, destroy them!"

The Gliscor leapt at us, but Rembrandt expertly leapt up and deflected his blow with his tail, smearing his opponent with green paint. The crowd gasped at this display, while we flinched backwards and Anne and Ralph instinctively pulled out PokeBalls of their own.

"Carolus, you're up!" Anne yelled, revealing an Arcanine. Ralph, in the meantime, threw his without announcement, which produced his Serperior.

"Ah, now the games truly begin!" Wolfgang announced, taking out yet another PokeBall. "Tyrranus, destroy them!"

The red light coalesced into a Murkrow, who glared at us with vicious fury.

"How did you get all of these?" I asked. "I was under the impression you stayed in your basement all day?"

Wolfgang frowned, and then began laughing. "I do go out sometimes, you know! My foolish family assumed the same as you, so it was trivial to sneak out occasionally and ready myself for this confrontation. Catching, training, making my outfit, all done right under their nose!"

"Clever," Ralph said, "but why?"

"Why?" Wolfgang asked, looking genuinely surprised. "To prove them wrong, of course! Everybody told me I would amount to nothing; my teachers, my 'friends', even my own parents, and for a time, I thought they were correct. But then I realized something in my basement: I could organize things fairly well, and more importantly, I was entirely under everyone's radar. Who would ever think stupid layabout Larry would ever do anything dangerous? None of them, and look at me now! I will accomplish more than any of them ever did, and I will start by wiping you three off the map!"

Gliscor and Tyrannus launched at us again, and Rembrandt and the Serperior responded in kind, while Carolus stayed behind with an uncomfortable look on his face.

"Three on two?" he asked. "Isn't that kind of unfair?"

We observed the battle, and indeed, our Pokémon seemed to have an obvious upper hand, even without Carolus' help.

"What was that?" Wolfgang asked.

"Carolus thinks the odds aren't fair!" Anne shouted over the din of the fight before us.

"Then I shall even them myself!"

The crowd gasped again as Wolfgang leapt into the fray, producing a silver dagger and separating his Pokémon from ours in an instant, leaving them standing opposite each other, panting from exertion. Carolus decided this had evened the odds enough to justify his entrance, and he quickly stood alongside the others.

"Stop this at once, Wolfgang!" I cried. "No human can possibly stand up to a Pokémon, especially not these three!"

Wolfgang smirked. "Perhaps you are right. Gliscor, Tyrannus, let us leave this place!"

He leapt up to an impressive height, his two Pokémon flying up and grabbing onto his shoulders to fly him away. By the time we had all gathered beneath him, he was much too high for us to do much of anything, but rather than leaving us immediately, he decided to properly part.

"Farewell, my nemeses!" he cried, smiling in glee. "Please, enjoy this parting gift!"

Tyrannus lowered slightly, allowing Wolfgang to shake free a small black cylinder from his sleeve. Anne immediately recognized what it was, and she yelled for everyone to clear out. As we all did so, Wolfgang pulled the pin from the smoke grenade and dropped it to the ground. A thick smokescreen was immediately produced, but luckily the crowd had managed to escape from it. Unfortunately, as a consequence, it was trivial for Wolfgang to make his escape, flying off and laughing the whole while. By the time it dissipated, he was long gone.

"Damn it!" Ralph yelled. "Who knows what he's going to do now?"

"Where did he get that smoke grenade?" Anne asked, before remembering what she had in her pack. She started sifting through it, counting out a handful of smoke grenades and coming to a disturbing conclusion.

"He stole one of mine!"

"How did he know you had those?" Ralph asked.

"He must have been following us around and noticed them," I said. "Now what?"

"We should get on the ship," Ralph suggested, "so we can get to Unova. He won't be able to come onto the ship, and he'll have to go there as well. That way we can be waiting for him."

"It is very unlikely that he will be able to get ahead of us with just those Pokémon," I pointed out. "His speed would be abysmal, and he would need to stop frequently to rest and eat."

"What if he finds another way there?" Anne asked.

"Travel into Unova is still quite restricted," I explained. "The SS Anne is still the fastest way there, and the only other way in is through the ground checkpoints. No matter what he does, we would be there long before he is."

"What if he snuck aboard?"

"Unlikely, with what he was wearing, not to mention the splash he made out here."

"Speaking of which, what the hell happened out here?" a voice came from behind us. We turned around to see none other than the captain of the ship, who looked somewhat annoyed. We quickly recalled our Pokémon and turned to face him, preparing our explanation for the recent events.

"Some idiot attempted to attack us under the impression we were his nemeses, but we quickly put a stop to that," I said.

"And the smoke grenade?" he asked. Anne looked away for a moment, but Ralph came to her rescue.

"He threw it so he could get away," he said, not bothering to add who he had taken it from.

"I see, can we get a description on him?"

"Think what Mozart would wear," I started, the captain nodding in understanding, "if he were a goth nihilist."

"I…see?" The captain looked confused for a moment, but shook his head and looked us over.

"Hey, aren't you those guys that went into the Silph building yesterday?" he asked, finally recognizing us.

"Why, yes, we are!" I said.

"Huh." He scratched his head, quite stumped. "Can't you go anywhere without saving everybody?"

"It seems not." I pulled out my wallet. "Can we get some tickets? We really should be getting aboard."

The captain paused. "Certainly, certainly, give me the fee and I'll sort it out for you."

"Actually, I have the tickets already!" I pulled out the tickets and handed them to him, before I recalled something else.

"How about our car?" I gestured towards the Horizon, sitting there in all its glory.

"Jesus, is that a Vincentio? I'll get someone to bring that aboard. Will there be anything else?"

Anne, Ralph, and I looked at each other for a moment, and then turned back. "I do not believe we will require anything else."

"Alright, then, I'll get this all sorted and then you can come aboard." The captain walked off, leaving us behind, hoping that between then and the ship's departure later that afternoon, nothing else would happen…


	8. Out of Time

A Reminiscence

Chapter Eight

Out of Time

()()()

Later that afternoon, the massive cruise ship was about to take off, with us three standing on the deck and having some light discussion. By this time, we had already gone into our room, which was quite nice; I had to remember to thank Oak for the room later on.

The conversation we were having was quite lovely, and it would have continued to be so had a certain fellow not entered the picture: Jack LeBoure.

We had no idea he was even on the ship, and so we were rapt with attention as Ralph explained one of his many escapades within Special Command, unaware of the annoyance coming towards us.

"So, anyway," Ralph continued, "we realized that the microfilm had been treated with an explosive liquid, so we wouldn't be able to read what was on it without blowing us all to hell, so we had to figure out a way to neutralize it, and that's when Jonathan remembered that Classic Coke might be able to work but could potentially degrade the film itself…"

"Yeah, yeah, fascinating chemistry lesson, buddy," Jack said, pushing into our group out of absolutely nowhere. "How about getting something interesting into this!"

"Oh, for God's sake," I muttered, squeezing my nose.

"Yeah, I guess we're all heading to Unova, huh?" he said, wrapping his arm around Ralph for some reason. "Four peas in a pod, huh?"

"If one of them had blight, yes," I said, glaring powerfully at him.

"Larch!" Anne yelled. "Knock it off! We are not doing this on a cruise ship!"

"Hey, you're a trainer, right?" Jack asked, gesturing at her. "I have seen some crazy shit. Have you ever heard about how I caught a Latias?"

"You caught a Latias?" Anne looked very shocked, which was odd, since Jack liked to make sure everybody knew exactly how he had caught a Latias.

"Indeed I did! Want to hear the story? It's a hell of a tale!"

"Oh, spare me," I muttered. Anne, however, did not sympathize, and walked off with him to listen to the same story he told to everybody else. I sputtered for a moment, but realized there was nothing else to do for it.

"That idiot!" I muttered. "Can he do anything without it involving me somehow?"

"Larch, what's your big problem with that guy?" Ralph asked, genuinely confused.

"He cannot do anything without putting himself upon the most massive pedestal imaginable, and it always involves annoying me for some bizarre reason!"

"I don't think he's trying to be annoying, Larch. He might just be trying to make nice and failing miserably at it."

I considered this for a moment, but before I could offer a response, the ship's intercom blared to life with the voice of the captain, which announced the ship would be departing in five minutes.

"I think we should go to our room," Ralph suggested. I agreed it would probably be wise, so we made haste below deck to the proper room, waiting for Anne, who presumably was still listening to Jack's ramblings, and likely would be for quite some time.

()()()

A bit later, the ship was well under way, treading slowly through the mighty waves of the ocean. Anne was currently recounting what Jack had claimed to her, Ralph listening with rapt attention while I fiddled around on my laptop, hoping to distract myself from Anne's dictation. Regrettably, she was so excited it was impossible to ignore without appearing incredibly rude.

"…And so he's going to try to catch a Latios over the next year," she said, while I groaned inwardly, "because, you know how they're like a pair and he already has a Latias? Well, he wants to have a proper pair of them, and he realized that Latios are much more elusive and difficult to find than a Latias, so it'll be a really big challenge for him, but looking at some of the things he's done in the past…"

"Oh, heavenly father, please spare me of this endless torment," I muttered, looking through what I had produced over the last while: a more specific definition of the translator's function, which would doubtlessly come in handy in Unova, and especially for Silph's engineers. Perhaps it was quite useful for Jack to borrow Anne for a while, since in the time she had been recounting his stories, I was so desperate to ignore all of it that I had heard before that I had produced an almost entirely complete explanation of the translator's every aspect.

Unfortunately, Anne continued on with the story, now talking about Jack's supposed encounter with a Mew at one point. I always did doubt that particular story greatly, as there were enough holes in it to leave a Swiss dairy farm set for life. Thankfully, the transparently fabricated story was interrupted, though not in a way I would have liked: by the loud report of a cannon far off the distance.

"What in the hell was that?" I asked, closing out my program.

"It sounded like some sort of cannon," Ralph said. "Like, a really old cannon."

"Shooting at a civilian ship with an old iron cannon in this political climate?" I wondered aloud. "That would be suicide for whoever is stupid enough to try it!"

"Well, then, who did?" Anne asked. "There aren't any countries desperate enough to try using something like that."

Suddenly, the intercom cracked to life once more. "Attention, passengers," it spoke, "do not be alarmed by the cannon fire and do not panic. The ship that fired it is well out of our range. Thank you."

"Not even in range?" The situation was becoming more and more bizarre the longer we went on. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Let's go and find out," Ralph suggested. We agreed this was wise, and quickly made our way to the observation deck. There, we saw a very odd sight indeed, as did everyone else who was looking there: an old-fashioned galleon, flying a very particular sort of flag.

"That's a bloody pirate ship," I said, absolutely confounded by this development.

"What the hell is a pirate ship doing here?" Ralph said.

"And why did it try to fire at us?" Anne said. "It can't possibly reach us from there."

We watched the ship for a few moments more, and then noticed something: the sails were turning, and it was slowly adjusting trajectory to come straight at us.

"Oh, God, they're coming closer. Everybody, get below deck!" I yelled. The crowd rushed to do so, but in their haste prevented us from doing the same. Soon, the door was closed, with us standing out in the open and the pirate ship approaching at a very alarming rate.

"Well, now what?" Anne asked, standing behind me.

"Uh…get back inside before they fire again?" Ralph suggested. I ran over to the door, but before I could, I noticed that the ship had gotten very close to us, as the wind was at a quite convenient angle, and therefore had a perfect line of fire with the ship.

"Oh, dear."

"Get down!" Ralph yelled, running towards me, low to the ground as possible. A very loud report suddenly sounded, and we ducked, expecting a hole blown into the ship at any moment. Luckily, we only heard a splash, and looked back up in confusion.

"What was that?" I asked. "What happened?"

"They must be using a small type of shot," Ralph explained, "one that couldn't make it to the ship."

"Well, now what?" Anne asked. "If they aren't going to shoot the ship, what next?"

"They might try to board." Ralph looked at the ship, considering what their options were. "I don't know what would happen then."

"I doubt they would be able to take on the ship's security," I said. "Not with the weapons they are most likely using."

We looked further, and noticed a small dinghy had been lowered into the water, with a very bombastically dressed fellow at the helm of it, likely the captain. Once it reached the sea, they began rowing towards us immediately. It soon became apparent we were not the only ones who noticed this, as the ship's security came pouring out, surrounding the only place where the pirates could make landing, a strangely empty lifeboat rack that was fairly close by to us. The captain of the S.S. Anne soon came to us as well, looking quite concerned.

"Captain!" I said. "What brings you out here?"

"You're going to help me figure this out," he said, looking straight at us with thorough impunity.

"What?! How could I help?"

"You saved the Silph Co. building from terrorists and devastated Team Rocket at the same time," he explained. "I think you can handle some pirates."

I thought about this for a moment, and realized he had a very good point.

"All right, all right, make way!" I yelled, pushing through the men, the captain at my side. I pushed up my glasses and began the formulation of a plan. "I'm in control of this situation now, so do as I say. First order of business, find out who those men are."

Several of the security men followed me as I walked over to the lifeboat rack, looking down into the water at the small dinghy. The only people in it were the captain, a large, powerfully built man with a long gray beard, and two crewmates, who had presumably rowed him here.

"What do you want?" I yelled down, hoping for at least a somewhat positive answer.

"We wish to parley with your captain!" he yelled back, in a surprisingly clean voice.

"He is up here. Are you going to try and shoot anybody? I should warn you we are very well-armed up here and you would most likely lose."

"How do you figure that?" He knocked on the side of the ship, resulting in a loud echoing noise. "And what be this ship made of?"

"Steel," I explained, "Quite durable, and yet lightweight at the same time."

"A steel ship!" the captain yelled, quite clearly impressed. "Who's ever heard of such a thing?"

"Quite a few people up here. Would you like to come up to…'parley', was it?"

"Aye!" he yelled. "Let down the ropes and bring us up!"

"Are you crazy?!" the captain of our ship yelled, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me back. "You can't let him up here! He fired on us!"

"That was only to get your attention!" Greybeard yelled up at us.

"Well, there you have it," I insisted. "The only way to make sense of all this is to raise the dinghy, and we have little reason not to!"

"…Fine. Bring him up!" A number of the men ran to the rack and lowered the ropes down to the dinghy, which were quickly hitched up. Slowly and carefully they raised up the boat, the captain standing in the center quite dramatically, his massive frame rising over the edge of the boat like a great vision of the sea. As he stepped off with his crewmates, the security men raised their weapons, ready to aerate him at a moment's notice.

He looked around at them, taking particular notice of their guns. "What sort of weapons be these?" he asked.

"MP5s, I think," I answered. "Now, then, to business. Who are you, exactly?"

"Everybody calls me Greybeard," he answered, "scourge of the Kanto main!"

"Greybeard?" I realized now who he was, and that something very strange indeed was going on. "That is impossible! You died three hundred years ago!"

His eyes widened in shock, looking around at our ship. "Then…my ship has gone forward in time!"

"Absolute nonsense. How can a 17th century galleon initiate time travel?"

"I don't know!" he yelled back. "All I care about is getting back, now!"

The security tensed up, but the captain gestured for them to stand down. "We'll do whatever we can to help. Can you tell me what happened before you came here?"

Greybeard thought for a moment, trying to remember the events that led him here. "The last I remember is that we were sailing the seas…it was about sundown, and then suddenly, I noticed something strange: the green flash, right upon the horizon as the sun set."

"A rare phenomenon indeed," I noted. "Perhaps it had something to do with you being here?"

"I would have guessed as much, considering how it grew bigger and bigger, until I realized it wasn't on the horizon. No, it was surrounding the ship itself with its eerie glow. I tried to rouse my crew, but by the time I did, it was too late, and we were all put asleep by that ghostly glow. When we woke up, we found ourselves here, noticed your ship, and tried to take it over to make sense of all this." He looked around at all of us. "Obviously, we didn't manage to do that."

"It is obvious that the green glow is what sent you forward in time," I said. "But the question is how, and perhaps even why?"

"And more importantly, how do we send him back?" the captain said, glaring at him.

"Come now, there is no need to be confrontational. We can all be friendly, can we not?"

Greybeard narrowed his eyes. "I don't know, can we? Especially considering this new friend you've brought for us?"

He pointed to his left, and when we looked, I very nearly fainted right then and there, since he was referring to none other than Jack LeBoure, who had come back out at some point.

"What the hell is going on here?" he asked, apparently even more bewildered than I was.

"Jack, believe me, you are hardly the first among us to wonder about that," I said. "A more useful question is, what the hell are you doing here?"

"I was looking outside my window just over there," he explained, pointing to a window attached to one of the upper-deck rooms quite close to us, "and noticed you standing there talking to Captain Homeless here. Care to explain?"

"I am not currently at liberty to release this information to civilians," I said, grinning unpleasantly.

"Oh, and I suppose you just know exactly what's going on?" Jack asked, staring me down. My smile faltered, as I realized I had little idea of what could have been responsible, and he might possibly know something to fill in that gap.

"All right, then, I shall disclose the situation to you." I pointed to Greybeard and began my explanation. "This is Captain Greybeard, well-known seventeenth-century pirate, who operated in these very waters."

Jack stared flatly at me, clearly not accepting my explanation of the events. I rubbed my neck and desperately tried to think of a way to present the facts without sounding entirely mad.

"Consider this!" I said, trying to recover. "According to Greybeard, he was sailing along in his ship right out there," I pointed to the galleon still within the ocean, which Jack seemed genuinely surprised by, "and at sunset, he saw the green flash!"

"That's quite a rare phenomenon," Jack noted, sounding slightly more interested.

"Indeed it is, and this particular one might be considered unique, as it actually surrounded his entire ship and knocked out him and his whole crew. When he next woke up, he found himself here in our time period."

"Green light…green light…" Jack mumbled, considering the facts of the incident. "Wait! I think I know what happened!"

"Well? Out with it!" Greybeard demanded.

"Have any of you heard of Celebi?" he asked, or perhaps demanded.

Greybeard, the captain, and myself shared a glance, stumped by his question. I then remembered something I had once read and mostly forgotten about.

"Celebi is the guardian of the forest in Johto folklore, correct?" Jack nodded, and then filled in the rest for us.

"According to the legends, Celebi protects the forest from those who do it harm. More importantly, though, she has the unique ability to manipulate space-time and freely travel to any time period and location at will."

Greybeard rubbed his, well, beard, deep in thought. "If she can travel through time itself, why would she send me forward?"

"And more importantly," I continued, "how might we get her to send you back?"

"We'll be making a stop in Johto along the way to Unova," the captain noted. "You might be able to search for her there."

"Celebi is little more than a myth, though," I pointed out. "The number of people that have believably seen her could be counted on a shop teacher's hand."

"As far as I'm concerned, it's the only option we've got." The captain turned to Greybeard. "If you follow us to Johto, we can return you once we find Celebi."

"_If_ you find her, you mean," Greybeard spat. "As far as I'm concerned, if it's nothing more than a legend, there's probably good reason it's nothing more than a legend."

"Like your buried treasure?" I said. Greybeard lunged at me, getting quite up in my face, as it were.

"How do you know about that?" he demanded, staring straight down at me.

"Simple: it is quite a popular legend. I myself always fancied it as being somewhat a reality, but never gave it much thought. Evidently, it is quite the truth."

Greybeard thought about this for a moment, before conceding the point to me. "Aye, it be the truth. And if it be legend now, then perhaps there's more to this Celebi thing."

"Quite. You shall follow after us until we reach Johto, and then we shall search for Celebi to return you to your proper time period. Jack, would you care to assist?" I turned to him, somewhat fearing the answer, whether negative or positive.

"Eh, might as well," he answered. "Good practice for Latios, at least."

"Very well!" I yelled, walking back over to Ralph and Anne. "I shall prepare myself, and you shall do the same!"

"What the hell was that?" Ralph demanded of me once I reached him. "What's even going on here?"

"To put it quite simply, we are going to help a seventeenth-century pirate captain return to his proper time period by locating a Legendary Pokémon and recruiting her assistance."

"What the hell?" Anne asked, bewildered.

"Come now, Anne, is that any more ridiculous than any of our other exploits? It was only yesterday, after all, that we performed our own reenactment of Die Hard with the largest company in Kanto. In fact, we did better; everybody in the building survived except for Giovanni!"

Anne shrugged, evidently deciding that I had a point. "So…what's the plan?"

"We shall return to our room and I will outline it there. Also, do not be alarmed regarding the pirate ship that will follow after us."

"What the hell?!" Anne yelled, but by that time, I was already making my way back to my room, suddenly feeling very confident about the whole business.

()()()

It was quite a bit later, sundown in fact, when things had calmed down and the ship had gotten moving once more. Greybeard's ship, which I had learned was called _Magnolius, _was trailing behind us, masts flapping in the wind in the style of old. I myself stood upon the highest deck, watching as we headed into the sunset, occasionally glancing back at the majestic sight of the ship behind us.

"What are you doing up here?" Anne asked, coming up the stairs. I had been up here for some time after delivering a full explanation of the goings-on, and presumably she was getting worried.

"Just…thinking," I answered.

"About what?"

"About all that I have accomplished recently with you two. Every single day, something incredible has occurred. In fact, I daresay that more has happened in the last week than ever before in my life. And yet, I have come out of not only in one piece, but almost better off than I was before."

"You really have done a lot," Anne said, coming up next to me to observe the sunset. "You should be proud."

"Indeed, I am. And it has me thinking; this sunset. We are headed off to Johto in search of one of the most elusive Legendary Pokémon known to man so that we may return a legendary pirate to his correct place in time, and the day is not yet over. Who knows what will happen when the sun rises anew tomorrow?"

"It could be anything, now that we've got them after us." Anne sat down, taking a short rest. "And whatever the hell it is, I'm sure it's going to be interesting."

"What else could it possibly be?" I asked. "If we have any more interesting things happening, we will get into the history books. Assuming I manage to actually deliver my discourse on the translator, I easily would on that merit, let alone all my other accomplishments."

"Maybe we're meant to go down in history," Anne suggested. "You know, great heroes of myth and all that."

"Perhaps." I smiled, and then chuckled a bit. "That would be quite interesting, would it not?"

Anne nodded, and we both watched the sun set together, and for once, I actually looked forward to what the new day would hold, knowing that it would certainly be an adventure.

END OF PART ONE


	9. Put Under

A Reminiscence

Chapter Nine

Put Under

We had been sailing for several days by the time we made port in Sinnoh; so much so, in fact, I had only one week before my presentation in Unova would occur, but luckily, we would reach Unova well within the allotted timeframe, which was very good for us indeed. However, before we could get to that, we had to stop in Johto and figure out how to put Captain Greybeard back in his proper time period.

The port we made was in Olivine City, guided by the colossal lighthouse that made the town famous. Although the two ships we were on were travelling roughly alongside each other, Captain Greybeard found himself forced to weigh anchor outside of the main port so that the captain of the SS Anne could explain the situation to the proper authorities, so as not to cause undue panic.

While the captain explained the situation, Ralph, Anne, and myself were standing upon the pier, within a fair-sized group of very panicked people around us. Most of them were staring at the colossal pirate ship just near them, wondering how the situation would develop further. We, however, had little more interest in its possibilities, so we were merely waiting for Jack to come to us and discussing a plan of searching for Celebi. However, given the fact that a legendary pirate ship was sitting within easy viewing distance, the conversation inevitably turned to it.

"I really don't think this is going to end well," Anne said, considering our current predicament. "I mean, pirates in a port town? When in history has that ever gone well for anybody?"

"I do not think we have much to worry about in this circumstance," I proposed. "They have junky old pistols, cutlasses, and rum. The people the captain is getting onto this have guns and protective armor. Frankly, even if they do try something, they are likely to get shot immediately."

"They could still easily hurt people, though," Ralph pointed out. "We have to keep them under control somehow."

"Hm…how would one keep pirates under control?" I wondered aloud.

"Bribe them?" Anne offered.

"We could never possibly afford enough gold to bribe a crew of that size," I countered.

"How about beer?" Ralph asked. We considered this for a moment, and realized he had an excellent point; if we gave the crew a fair amount of strong alcohol, we could placate them and perhaps even get them incredibly drunk, which would prevent them from doing anything unpleasant.

"Excellent idea!" I cried. "Are there any breweries nearby?"

"I think there are a few," Jack said, having suddenly arrived. "What's this about breweries, anyway?"

"We are going to give Greybeard's crew a load of alcohol to stop them from doing something unpleasant to the town," I answered.

Jack paused for a moment, considering the proposal. "I guess that makes sense. I mean, it's more logical than any of the shit that's been going on already."

"Only just, though," I pointed out. "Ah, here comes Greybeard now!"

We looked over, and saw that Greybeard was sailing over on his dinghy, making impressively good time, all things considered.

"Ahoy!" he cried once he reached the dock, waving to us. "What's the order of business?"

"Uh…" I looked behind me to look at my group, and they urged me to tell him the current state of affairs. "We…had some concerns regarding your crew."

"Those being?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Uh…well, typically pirates and port towns are not the best of combinations, burning and pillaging, you know, all that, and we thought it would be pertinent to keep your crew under control somehow…"

"Get to the point!" Greybeard demanded.

"We would like you to stay on your ship for the time being while we acquire some amount of alcohol to placate your crew until we locate Celebi."

Greybeard thought about this for a moment, stroking his long beard, and then nodded in approval. "That sounds like a fair idea. I'll go stop them from doing anything stupid." He got back into his dinghy, and as he sailed back to his galleon, he turned back to us, and yelled, "And I'll expect some damn good beer!"

"What the hell was that?" the captain of the SS Anne asked, walking up next to us after finishing his explanation.

"Captain Greybeard is going to keep his crew under control until we can acquire enough alcohol to placate his crew and prevent them from doing something unpleasant in the town," I said.

"Somehow, hearing it said out loud made it seem even stupider," Jack commented, grimacing.

"I have to agree," the captain said. "That sounds like an absolutely ridiculous plan."

"A ridiculous plan for a ridiculous circumstance," I answered. "Consider that we are, in fact, dealing with time travelling pirates here."

The captain shrugged. "I suppose there's at least some logic there."

"About time we had some logic," Ralph said. "So, where's the brewery?"

"There's a good one on the end of Mulch Street," the captain suggested. "I've been there before while sailing, and they have pretty quality stuff."

"Excellent!" I cried. "We shall go there posthaste and acquire something very strong."

"How strong are we talking here?" Anne asked. "Like, equivalent to napalm, or what?"

"Perhaps not that much," I answered. "But it should be fairly strong. Remember, we are trying to placate a crew of about forty, so we will need a fairly high alcoholic content."

"Well, what are we standing around here yammering for?" Jack asked. "Let's go!"

()()()

A few minutes later, after setting off in search of the famed brewery, we found it, and it was certainly quite impressive; a large brick building, a sign on the front proclaiming it as the "Olivine Brewery and Distillery." Several shining silver pipes lead in and out of the building, to carry the necessary chemicals and catalysts to produce that golden ambrosia. Most of the inner workings were contained in the back of the building; however, we had little interest in taking a tour. No, we wanted the front entrance, which contained a fairly nice bar where purchases could be made, including the kegs that we were currently searching for.

"This is quite the brewery," Jack commented as we made our entrance. Sitting at the main counter was a bored twenty-something man, absentmindedly reading a newspaper.

"You're gonna have to show ID if you wanna buy something," he said, turning the page over.

"Will this be sufficient?" I asked, pulling out my wallet and showing him my driver's license.

"Yeah, sure. Whaddya want?"

I thought for a moment, looking at the spirits offered there. However, I had absolutely no context for any of them, and had to inquire further to get what I wanted.

"What, pray tell, would your strongest offering be?" I asked.

"Entei's Revenge. That stuff'll put out a raging Tyranitar with a couple shots."

I glanced back to my group, who seemed pleased with the description offered.

"Very well!" I said, pulling out some money. "How much would it be for a keg of that?"

"What, Entei's Revenge?" the man asked, amused. "You can't get a keg of it. It's illegal to store it that way."

"Illegal?!" I yelled, baffled by this development. "Why would it be illegal to store kegs of it? What is in it?"

"It's 180-proof," he answered."

"180!" I cried. "This stuff is ninety percent alcohol by content?"

"Yeah, that's why it's illegal to have kegs of it. If there's a fire, they'd blow up like a bomb."

"And little wonder they would! How can anybody stand to drink such a thing?"

"They're stupid and went into a bet?"

"Or perhaps lost one…" I muttered. "Alright, look, we need something very strong, say, strong enough to put out a crew of forty hardened pirates?"

The man looked at me strangely. "That's an oddly specific way of putting it."

"We have an oddly specific circumstance," I said.

He stood up, glaring at me. "What the hell kind of circumstance are you talking about?" A flash of realization crossed his face as he remembered what was going on today. "Wait a minute, you're that Berkeley Larch guy, from Kanto! The one that came in with the pirate ship, right?"

"Uh, yes," I answered, wondering how the media had gotten the story that quickly, considering we had been out at sea for the last several days. I set that aside and continued on with the conversation. "We realized it may be a poor idea to have a ship of pirates on the outside of a port town, so we thought it wise to acquire some alcohol to placate them for the time being until we can return them to their proper place in history."

"Uh…" the man gawked at me for a moment, before shaking his head and thinking honestly about what could be done.

"Let me think…yeah, the only thing that we have enough of is the Offshore stout."

"What would be the proof of that?" I asked.

"Uh…about ten percent."

"Ten?" I began to mutter in thought, considering the options. "Very well, it appears we have no other choice. I shall take two kegs of that."

"Two kegs?" the man asked. "Are you sure that's gonna be enough?"

"That's a good point," Anne said. "I really don't think that's gonna do it."

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing," I explained. "I am a scientist, after all."

"That doesn't really follow…" Anne began, but she was stopped when the man came back out, lugging two fair-sized containers of the Offshore.

"All right, that'll be three hundred dollars," he said, slightly out of breath.

"Three hundred dollars?!" I cried. "To hell with that, just give me the one."

"Oh, Jesus," he muttered, slowly putting one of them back. He took some time in returning, but soon was, looking somewhat annoyed with me.

"All right, that's a hundred and fifty dollars for the one keg," he spat. "Are there any more issues with that, your majesty?"

"Not at all," I said, pulling out the necessary (though still somewhat excessive) funds. Soon, we were back outside, lugging the shining cylinder behind us.

"Great job, Larch," Jack commented. "You got some lame-ass beer. This won't be enough to put them out for shit!"

"Must you really, Jack?" I questioned. "We are going to have to work together on this, you realize."

"Yeah, as if you're one to talk," Jack responded.

"Oh, spare me, Captain Hubris."

"You gonna start this, Professor Jackass?"

"Will both of you idiots PLEASE SHUT THE HELL UP!" Anne cried at her most impressive volume, immediately silencing us both and brining the group to a halt.

"Uh…" Jack stammered. "M-my apologies, Larch."

"Likewise, Jack," I said, eyes wide with spontaneous terror. I shook my head, and began to explain my plan. "Look, it is obvious this amount of beer will not be sufficient for our purposes. Therefore, we shall have to increase the potency by some manner."

Jack nodded, getting the idea of my plan. "All right, that makes sense. How do we do that, exactly?"

"Simple. I fake a wound, enter into a pharmacy, purchase some rubbing alcohol with the disguise of the aforementioned wound, exit, and then introduce it into the keg."

Anne made gagging noise, Ralph stared at me in fierce confusion, and Jack merely slapped his face.

"Is there a problem, Jack?" I asked.

"First, that's the dumbest-ass plan I've ever heard, and two, you can't just pour rubbing alcohol into a keg of porter! That's disgusting!"

"They are pirates!" I insisted. "They drink rum daily! What would they care of the quality of it"?

"It's rubbing alcohol!" Jack responded. "I'm not going to just sit by and let you skunk up a perfectly fine keg of beer!" he yelled, yanking the keg from my hands.

"Well, then, I suppose you have a better idea?" I asked.

"Why, yes, I do!"

"Very well then!" I turned to Ralph. "We shall do this scientifically. Ralph, you help me acquire the rubbing alcohol. Anne, you go with Jack to do…whatever his plan is."

Anne glanced at us a few times, before she and Jack ran off.

"Uh…so, how do you want to do this?" Ralph asked, rubbing the back of his head.

"Firstly, we must acquire some gauze." As I said this, Ralph produced an amount of gauze from his pack that would be more than sufficient.

"Uh…excellent," I said. "Now we will require some food coloring…"

Once more, Ralph produced an amount of red dye. I stared at him for a moment, somewhat perturbed by this.

"Why do you have…never mind. Here, wrap it around my arm," I said, pulling up my sleeve.

"Somehow, I doubt this is going to work," Ralph said, putting some of the dye on the gauze and wrapping it around me. After a few moments, I had a reasonably convincing wound, and had every confidence it would allow me to collect the rubbing alcohol my plan required.

"Excellent!" I cried, pulling my sleeve back over it to keep it covered until it would be needed. "Now, we must find ourselves a pharmacy!"

"I think there's one over there," Ralph said, pointing down the street. I looked and saw that, indeed, a small pharmacy was located there.

"Good eye, Ralph! Hold this while I go get the alcohol," I pushed the keg into him, knocking out his breath quite well. I might have sworn I heard him muttering something as I walked off, but I set that thought aside.

()()()

Although the pharmacy was not nearly as impressive as the brewery we had recently left behind, it was still a fair establishment, containing a variety of medications, bandages, and many other materials that would be invaluable to most people. I, however, was not searching for any of those. Just before I made my entrance, I pulled my sleeve back up, revealing the "bloodied" gauze, although it was now looking a tad smudged. I set that thought aside as I walked up to the front desk, attempting to look as convincingly pained as possible.

"Hello?" I asked, straining as much as I could. "I am in dire need of some rubbing alcohol for this grievous wound."

The cashier, who was distracted with something below the counter, looked up at me, recoiling in shock. "Oh my God!" he cried. "What the hell happened to you?"

I paused for a moment, realizing I had no good alibi for the false injury. "I was…uh…attacked! In my very own home, no less, by a man who had stolen my serrated steak knife!"

"Damn!" he yelled, enraptured.

"Indeed! I managed to fight him off with a potted cactus, but regrettably, he got a fair strike on me before I did so, and it must be stopped before it becomes infected."

"Jesus, dude, we need to get you to a hospital!" he ran off for the telephone, and while he was not looking, I went into a bout of panic, as this was a severe departure from my original plan. Indeed, going to the hospital would not only waste time, it would reveal my ruse, which would have been a poor thing for all involved.

"Er, I think the more immediate issue is an infection setting in, and, of course, one must take into account the fact that, you know, superbugs and all that…"

"You got gouged with a serrated knife!" he yelled back. "Where'd the phone go, anyway?"

I looked around, and saw that he had been looking in the wrong place; the phone was actually on the front counter, only a few feet to the left of his original spot. While he was fumbling around in the back, I carefully slipped behind and unplugged it, which would hopefully be a useful distraction. Indeed, by the time I had gotten back to my place, he had returned, and noticed the phone as he did so.

"There it is!" he cried, running to it joyously. "Now how the hell did it end up here?" He picked it up, but soon noticed that it was not actually doing anything. "And, more importantly, why is it unplugged?" He looked to me, a suspicious look on his face.

"Uh…" I stammered, "it must have been, uh, terrorists. You know, the…anti-phone…terrorists." I smiled, hoping my unconvincing cover would serve at least some purpose.

"Anti-phone terrorists, huh?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "This sounds serious. I had better call the police."

I tensed up immediately upon hearing this suggestion. Calling the police would likely be even worse for me than the hospital.

"Uh…wait, I think I am starting to feel better..." I carefully pulled off my bandage, feigning surprise when I saw there was no wound. "My God! I've been healed! It's a miracle!"

I quickly made my exit, hoping the fellow would simply let the matter drop. By the time I made it back to Ralph, who still had the keg, I was home free, but unfortunately lacking in rubbing alcohol.

"Well?" Ralph asked, noticing my missing bandage. "What happened?"

"I unfortunately failed in this mission. Perhaps simply buying the rubbing alcohol outright without all this charade would have worked better, looking back…"

"Gee, you think?" Ralph muttered. Jack and Anne then returned, the former holding a very small bottle of something very special indeed.

"Jack!" I cried, running to him. "What have you acquired?"

"Entei's Revenge," he said, holding them up. Indeed, a fiery image of Entei was upon the label, though it was somewhat hard to tell, given the size of the bottle. "Pour some of this into the porter, and those pirates are going straight down."

Although somewhat annoyed I did not come up with the rather obvious solution before me, I set that aside and took the bottle, somewhat concerned due to its potency.

"How strong is this, practically?" I asked, straining my eyes at the ingredients on the back.

"Smell it and find out," Jack suggested.

I rather tenuously did so, popping one of them open and taking a very light whiff. Immediately, I recoiled, nearly spilling the liquid upon the ground, as my head went very fuzzy and very light indeed. I soon recovered from this, feeling quite unpleasant from it.

"Christ!" I muttered, pulling open the keg. "I nearly got drunk just from smelling that." I looked down into the keg's prize, then to the potent terror I was holding. "Well, here goes something." I quickly poured the clear liquid into the keg, shutting it closed again as soon as I could.

"The deed is done," I said, thinking about the implications of my action.

"You do all realize bootlegging is against the law, correct?" Anne asked.

"Extenuating circumstances, Anne," I pointed out, grabbing the keg. "If we do get found out, we have a fairly sound defense."

Anne brushed it off, and we all made our way back to the docks, carrying our concoction with us the whole way.

()()()

Soon enough, we had delivered our cargo to the waiting Greybeard, who quickly brought it over to his crew. Evidently, our strange little concoction was a hit, as he returned barely twenty minutes later, looking somewhat out of it himself.

"I don't know what that stuff you gave us was," he drawled, stepping onto the dock, "but whatever it was, it was pretty damn good. They won't be going anywhere for a while now."

"Indeed…" I said, carefully looking around. "So, the ship is stuck there, correct?"

"Aye. Here's a tip: never try to weigh anchor with a crew that's so drunk they can barely tell where their own hands are."

"I shall treasure that moral forever," I lied. "Now, then, I believe it would be wise to go the library and begin some research."

Greybeard groaned, but followed us anyway, as I looked back at the pirate ship sitting in the bay, hoping in vain that the library would not hold some bizarre adventure…


	10. Invaluable Data

A Reminiscence

Chapter Ten

Invaluable Data

()()()

With Greybeard's crew placated for the moment, we all decided it would be wisest to next visit the library so that we might find out where, exactly, Celebi was located, and how we might get her to help us.

Once we were able to find it, we were quite impressed, as the library itself was a fair-sized institution, whose architecture and color called to mind the Ancient Romans, what with the large arched windows, the cupola that served as a roof, and the Ionic pillars that contained the front doors, two massive slabs of expertly-carved mahogany. In fact, I doubt I shall ever see another educational institute quite so sharp as that one, unless I were to do some very intense searching. Anyway, with its astute appearance, we quickly assumed it would have the information we require, and we entered into its near-silent domain, observing its equally nice interior. It was a two-story building, with the cupola and its mighty chandelier dividing the top level into two sections, while the bottom floor remained as one. Impressively tall, well-organized bookshelves lined the walls and floors of both levels, containing all their great wisdoms.

"Uh…" Anne said, looking around at the impressive construction. "Where do we start?"

"It might be wise to start in sections having to do with myths and legends," I noted. "Where else would information regarding a Legendary Pokémon be?"

'That doesn't sound right," Jack opposed. "Myths and legend are going to be, like, fairy tales and stuff. We'll want, like, historical records."

"Valid historical accounts of such are few, though," I countered. "It would be wisest to search for a larger volume containing all information possible rather than scattered accounts from people desperate for attention."

"Makes sense to me," Ralph said. "I think we should look in that sort of section. Here, let's find out where it is." He vaulted for the front desk, and we followed suit, finding an elderly woman drinking from a small cup of tea.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"Yes?" She turned to us, setting down her tea.

"We were wondering where we might find the section for myths and legends?"

"Oh, of course!" she said cheerfully, looking up at the floor above us. "It's right up there, the second bookshelf from the wall." I thanked her and we started to walk away, and she waved at us as we did so. "You kids enjoy your Halloween, now!"

"Halloween?" Jack asked.

"Probably him," I said, looking over my shoulder at Greybeard. "Very conspicuous, all things considered."

"I have to be, else I wouldn't have fear on me side!" he proclaimed as we ascended the stairs. The old lady shushed him, and he scowled. "I never liked libraries much," he said, now in a whisper, "far too quiet and boring."

"Well, you may as well get used to them now, because it will likely be the thing that will save your life."

"Hm." Greybeard grunted. "I'll believe it when I see it. If this idea of yours does manage to lead us somewhere, I'll be damn impressed by it."

"Well, here we are," I said, gesturing towards the correct bookshelf, which proclaimed its contents as "Legends and Myths".

"Where should we start looking?" Jack asked.

"In the C-section, no doubt." Upon some odd looks, I clarified. "I mean in C for Celebi. Honestly, people."

"What?" Ralph asked. "It's arranged by author, isn't it?"

I looked, and saw that he was indeed correct; the "C" part of the shelf would only render us Carreras and such, which was not likely to be related to our search.

"Ah…yes," I mumbled. "My apologies, I was a bit excited."

We awkwardly walked into the shelves, and we started looking, trying to find as many books on the subject as possible Unfortunately, many of them were not quite what we were looking for. As I rifled through something that was probably written closer to Greybeard's birth than my own, and had the dust to show for it, Jack tapped my shoulder and showed me what was very obviously a children's book about Celebi, rather than anything especially useful.

"Somehow, I get the feeling this isn't quite what we're looking for," he said, crossing his arms.

"Well, why did you bother to pick it up, then?" I asked. "What was it even doing up here? Surely it ought to be downstairs. They had a children's section down there, didn't they?"

"Considering that old lady, I think we ought to count ourselves lucky this was even up here," he said. "This is starting to look kind of hopeless, Larch."

"Are you giving up?" I asked, putting my book back.

"What!" he cried. "No, I'm not giving up! I'm just saying that this is looking more and more like a complete waste of my time!" He threw his arms outward, loudly hitting the shelf next to us. He recoiled in pain, while I recoiled in horror, expecting the entire thing to domino over. It failed to do so, luckily, only producing the loud "thumps" of a few books hitting the floor.

"It did not fall over?" I questioned, straightening back up.

"Of course not," Jack croaked, "these are all bolted to the floor. Breaking my hand against it won't do much."

"Hey, what's this?" Ralph asked from the other side. Jack and I quickly made our way to him, and saw he was holding an old, brown-colored volume that looked quite important indeed, especially since its title was "Upon The Nature of the Forest Guardians".

"Where was this?" I asked, taking it from him.

"It fell down right next to me, but I didn't see it on the shelf," he said. "It must have been on top and fell when you hit it. By the way, what the hell did you do that for?"

"Uh…heat of the moment?" Jack tried to answer.

"Moving on, I believe this might play a part in our investigation," I said.

"This looks important, too," Anne said, walking up next to us with a book, this time a more middle-aged one called "Myths of Olivine".

"Aye, as does this," Greybeard said, producing a final piece, a quite modern book titled "Truth in Fiction: Legends of Johto".

"Most excellent!" I said. "With this knowledge in our possession, it should be utterly trivial to find out where Celebi can be found."

"Let's head downstairs," Jack suggested. "There was a table there where we can get everything organized."

"I have no doubt the librarian would offer us some paper and pencils for this purpose," I said. "It would be quite smart indeed to start collecting the information immediately. We may only have a limited time, after all."

We soon agreed this course of action was wise, and headed downstairs to begin sifting through what little information we had managed to find.

()()()

Roughly an hour later, we had condensed the books we found into a consistent notion of what Celebi was and how she might be found. To summarize our notes, as their acquisition was a long and uncomfortable process indeed, there was a particular shrine somewhere in the middle of a nearby forest that had several sightings of Celebi in the past, though few were confirmed, and it contained a mysterious inscription that had yet to be translated. We figured said shrine would be as wise a place to start as any, so by the time we completed that connection, we were about ready to leave.

"Well, I think this is more than sufficient to go start looking," I said, collecting some of our notes into a folder.

"This is getting pretty weird," Jack said. "I mean, ancient shrines in the middle of forests? What's next, are we gonna find the Ark of the Covenant?"

"Those were not even remotely the same film," I said. "How did you even draw those two ideas together, honestly…"

"Oh, hello!" a very exaggerated attempt at a posh voice interrupted. We turned, and saw that it came from none other than Lord Wolfgang von Genocide, a.k.a. Larry. "How fortuitous I should find you all here."

"Uh, Larch?" Jack asked. "Why is Emo Mozart here looking for us?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," I muttered. "What are you doing here, uh, 'Wolfgang', was it?"

"Lord Wolfgang von Genocide, yes."

"What the hell?" Jack deadpanned. "Seriously, did I miss something? Was something in that fish we had on the ship? I knew something was off with that stuff."

"I affirm you, I am no hallucination brought upon you by tainted seafood. I am, in fact, your doom!"

He produced a black cylindrical shape, and although Ralph, Anne and I recognized what it was and ducked down, Jack and Greybeard had no recollection of such a thing, and were thus helpless when he released the smoke grenade, filling much of the room with a thick grey cloud.

"What the hell is this shit?!" Jack cried, flailing helplessly, unable to see anything. Luckily, my glasses prevented me from being entirely blinded by the smoke, but it was still very difficult to see what was going on.

"Where does he keep getting these goddamn smoke grenades?" Anne questioned, trying to find her way around them. "I'm sick of them!"

"You are hardly alone in that aspect, Anne!" I cried. "Show yourself, Wolfgang!"

"As you wish," he said from behind me. I turned around, terrified, and he expertly punched me in the throat, sending me crumpling to the floor, along with my folder of notes. Although the combination of smoke and pain had nearly blinded me, I could still tell when he leaned down and picked up the folder, chuckling unpleasantly.

"Oh, damn it all," I croaked as he walked away. Soon after his exit, the smoke dissipated, and we slowly recovered. We gathered up again, most of our number trying to get the remaining residue out of their eyes, while I uncomfortably rubbed my throat, and Ralph ran off after the very strange villain.

"All right, Larch, I want to know _exactly_ what the screaming fuck just happened," Jack demanded.

"Are you boys having fun over there?" the elderly woman called over to us, evidently quite out of the loop.

"I wouldn't have any idea if we were or not with these jokers," Jack called back. He turned to us once more, quite annoyed. "Seriously, anybody want to get me up to speed on that?"

"What manner of weapon is this?" Greybeard asked, holding up the empty grenade.

"To answer your question, Greybeard, that is a smoke grenade, quite an ingenious invention, and as for yours, Jack, that is somebody who has inexplicably decided to play eighteenth century composer and has declared me his rival."

"Which translates to stealing our notes with a smoke grenade?" Jack asked, unconvinced.

"Apparently so. Wait, damn, our notes!"

"What about them?"

"If he is able to successfully locate Celebi, it could spell doom for us all!"

"Oh, yeah, I'm definitely afraid of Mr. Halloween Costume over there," Jack said, rolling his eyes. "Come on."

"What you fail to realize, Jack," I explained, "is that he is most likely entirely deranged and if he managed to get his hands on one of the most powerful Legendary Pokémon in all of existence, it could very easily spell doom for us all."

Jack considered this for a moment, realization dawning upon his face. "Holy shit, that would be a disaster! It's like giving a mental patient a machine gun!"

"Except probably much, much worse," Anne noted. "We need to look for him as soon as possible, or else."

"Ralph has already made very good work on getting him," I said. "Likely, if we find him, we find Wolfgang. I have no doubt he cannot resist taunting us some, which will likely prove advantageous to us if we use it right."

"Well, what be we waiting for?" Greybeard asked. "Let's get that lubber and string him up!"

"Uh, that may be a tad on the excessive side, Greybeard…" I suggested uncomfortably.

"Hmph," he grunted. "Fine, we'll just go get him. Happy?"

"Very well." The four remaining of us made haste for the exit, the librarian calling "Have a good time, now, you kids!" after us. Soon enough, we found ourselves outside, in a lovely circular pavilion surrounded with small apricot trees.

"All right, where are you?!" Jack yelled, and the four of us began looking around for any sign of the two rather odd men we were looking for. After a few minutes of looking around, we saw nothing readily obvious that would imply Wolfgang had been there. In fact, if we did not know better, we might well have said that they had disappeared entirely.

"Damn it, how far did they go?" Jack asked. "We weren't that far behind them, were we?"

"They must have been going quite quickly," I reasoned.

"Well, yeah, of course they were, they were chasing after each other," Anne said.

"Wait, are you telling me that the lanky guy in all black outran a Special Command operative in this weather?" He gestured to the clear sky, which rendered the day quite warm.

"He must have had something else. A moped, perhaps?" I wondered.

"Not as if he could lose any more dignity," Jack drawled.

"Well, in any case, I think we can all agree with that," I said. We heard a rather villainous laugh, and turned to find its source, seeing a very odd sight indeed: Ralph trying to jump up to Wolfgang, who was again being supported by Gliscor and Tyrranus.

"Try as you might, you will never be able to get upon my level!" he cried, laughing again. "Dance, dance!"

"Okay, seriously, what the screaming hell?" Jack asked. "There was definitely something in that fish…"

"Ah, Jack!" Wolfgang greeted, his Pokémon turning so he could face all of us. "And all the rest of you as well! Oh, what fun indeed! Say, do you want this back?" he asked, pulling out the folder containing our research.

"Give it back, ye lubber!" Greybeard cried, pulling out a flintlock pistol.

"Jesus Christ, have you gone insane?!" I cried, instinctively ducking down.

"What do ye mean, 'gone'?" he asked, firing a shot at Wolfgang. It missed entirely, but the noise was enough to frighten Tyrranus and Gliscor both, who started flapping about frantically, attempting to get away from the source of the noise. Wolfgang quickly became annoyed as they did so, nearly releasing the folder.

"Stop this at once, you fools!" he cried in anger, flailing his limbs about in attempt to strike them and get them back under control.

"That was much more effective than it ought to have been," I noted. "Can you fire another shot?"

"Aye, that I can!" Greybeard produced a second flintlock, dropping the first one to the ground, and quickly took aim, letting off a shot that actually managed to hit something, in this case Tyrranus' hat-like crest. In a greater panic than ever before, he released Wolfgang and started flying around all over the place, while Wolfgang himself, without the support of his other Pokémon, began falling, only just getting caught at the leg by Gliscor. The folder, as well, fell to the ground, releasing its invaluable contents everywhere.

"What the hell is going on here?!" a cop, a powerfully-built black fellow, demanded, entering the scene.

"Your guess is as good as mine!" Jack responded.

"Tyrannus, you imbecile, get back here!" Wolfgang yelled, flailing about as Gliscor barely held onto him.

"I don't get paid enough to deal with this shit," the cop muttered, pulling out his radio. "Station, this is Monroe, I have…something going on outside of the library."

Some unintelligible response came out, and he looked around at all of us, very confused. "Yeah, I don't think you're gonna have this anywhere in the book."

"I am Wolfgang von Genocide, damn you! This is completely undignified!"

"Oh, yeah, _now_ it's undignified," Jack said.

"Silence! I will have my revenge upon all of you, as soon as I reach the—" Gliscor, already straining to hold his master, finally let go, sending him plummeting towards the "GROUND!"

He fell to the earth below us with a great "thud", putting him quite out of it in an instant. Monroe carefully pulled out his handgun and approached Wolfgang's crumpled form, quite hesitant.

"All right, can you hear me?" he asked. Wolfgang grunted out something that may have been "yes", which was good enough for Monroe. He began pronouncing an arrest, leaning in slightly to ensure his quarry did not move away. This, however, proved to be a mistake, as Wolfgang revealed he had recovered quite handily and leapt up, kicking the handgun out of his hands before he was able to react.

"Holy shit!" Monroe cried as his weapon flew off. Wolfgang smiled, standing up quite tall considering his recent plummet, and expertly delivered a roundhouse kick to Monroe's temple, sending him to the ground in a crumpled heap. Using the sheer audacious shock of the moment to his advantage, Wolfgang ran off with Gliscor and the far less panicked Tyrranus as we all gawked rather uselessly at him.

"Wait, what the hell?" Jack asked. "After him!"

We shook away our shock at the recent turn of events and began our chase anew; at least, everyone else did, as I had made the decision to stay behind and ensure Monroe was okay.

"Officer?" I asked, carefully inching towards him. His eyes bolted open, and he shot up, soon clutching his head in pain.

"Aw, damn, what the hell happened?" he asked, voice strained.

"That person you were trying to arrest just roundhouse kicked you right in the head."

Monroe turned to me, shocked. "What? Where the hell did that dork learn to do that?"

I shrugged. "There are many ways to do so. He might have even been self-taught."

"He taught himself to be a goddamn black belt or something?"

"Well, he had plenty of time to himself, and he was hardly the type to attract attention. Quite a lot of potential to become very, very dangerous, there."

"What was in that folder he had?" Monroe asked.

"Information on the location of Celebi, which would obviously be a poor thing for him to get his hands on. Of course, as you can see," I gestured to the scattered sheets around us, "he is not likely to find much use for it now."

"Good thing. I wouldn't trust that guy with a spork, much less a Legendary Pokémon."

"Likely a wise decision," I said. "Shall we give chase to him?"

Monroe looked to his left, and his eyes widened in shock. "I don't think we'll have to!"

I looked in the same direction, and saw that, indeed, Wolfgang was running back to us, Pokémon flying above and that Uzi in his hand. He was being followed not only by my current group, but also numerous policemen, and all of them seemed quite annoyed. Monroe dived for his handgun, while I stood frozen in shock. Soon, we were all gathered around, Wolfgang surrounded on all sides, with no viable opportunities to escape.

"Give it up, you!" Monroe shouted, inching closer. "You're surrounded on all sides! Put your hands up and come peacefully!"

"Put my hands up?" Wolfgang asked, putting on a very sarcastic sort of "innocent" voice. "Now, why ever would I have need to do that?"

"Put your hands up and come peacefully!" he repeated, inching closer. "You have ten seconds to comply!"

"Ten seconds? Oh, well, that is not very much time at all. I suppose I had better just come over."

Wolfgang did indeed raise his hands, but I noticed a slight glint on a wire leading from his hand to something stuck within his shirt.

"Wait, no!" I cried, but it was too late. Wolfgang yanked up hard, releasing the pin on yet another one of those damned smoke grenades. The whole area was filled with smoke, and a few of the police let off some shots, but it was no use. A bright flash was produced from within the cloud of smoke, and when it cleared, there was no trace Wolfgang had ever been there.

"Damn it!" Monroe cried. "He teleported away!" All of the policemen quickly regrouped, Monroe delivering instructions for them to put out APBs and such. Soon, they were searching the area, and Monroe walked back to us.

"All right, I'm gonna need somebody to come back to the station to help us answer some questions."

"I'll go," Ralph offered, "I've been in situations like this before. You guys go get Celebi, I'll meet up later."

"Thank you," Monroe said, wiping his brow. "Care to tell me what the pirate's about?"

"Ah, yes, that…" I began. "Have you perhaps heard any news about one Professor Berkeley Larch?"

Monroe's eyes widened in recognition. "That's you? Shit, I thought most of that stuff was just rumor, but I guess not."

"I cannot possibly blame you for holding doubt," I said. "I myself still have some trouble believing it."

Monroe nodded, walking away with Ralph.

"Good luck with that dork!" Anne called back, as the remaining four of us headed for the forest, wondering what inevitable oddity would find us there…


End file.
